


Reigning In Hel

by misreall



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - All Media Types, Tom Hiddleston Fandom
Genre: A few other kinks, Alternate Identities, Anal Sex, Assassination Attempt(s), Betrayal, Blood and Violence, Bondage, Clones, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubious Ethics, F/M, Fucking, Gentle Sex, Glove Kink, Hair Kink, Hair-pulling, Horn kink, Identity Reveal, Jealousy, Jotunheim Won the War, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Loss of Identity, Loss of Virginity, MCU AU, Magic, Marking, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multiple Partners, Oral Sex, Poison, Rebellion, Revenge, Revolution, Rough Sex, Scent Marking, Sex, Sex Magic, Shapeshifting, Spanking, Tenderness, Threesome - F/M/M, Treason, Voice Kink, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-19 11:59:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 92,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11897298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: When the Jotunns defeated Asgard they took Midgard as a prize.  Nearly a thousand years later Emperor Laufey's least favored child, Loki sits on Midgard's throne, having turned a back-water planet into one of the brightest and most valuable jewels in his father's crown.  To help keep the peace with the indigenous people, he has chosen a human woman at random to serve as his queen.  Now on his sixth queen, Loki finds himself with a very different kind of consort.





	1. Gasoline and Matches

**Author's Note:**

> This is yet another AU of my Loki/Nora story, this one inspired by a certain Beta's enthusiasm for Jotun!Loki and by one of the scenes in this chapter :  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591122/chapters/24534219

“It was against all scientific reason for two people who hardly knew each other, with no ties at all between them, with different characters, different upbringings, and even different genders, to suddenly find themselves committed to living together, to sleeping in the same bed, to sharing two destinies that perhaps were fated to go in opposite directions.” 

―  [ **Gabriel García Márquez** ](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13450.Gabriel_Garc_a_M_rquez) ,  **Love in the Time of Cholera**

  
  


Nora was mucking out the pigs when she found out she was going to be queen.

 

“Nor!”  She heard her father yell from the entrance to the barn, and she gave a huge sigh, her eyes meeting Piddy, the largest and most patient sow they had.  She was already getting a late start, having had to do extra time with the goats since her brother Liam had talked their Da around to his going into town for the day for… for nothing they would actually need or could afford Nora was certain.

 

“What?”  She yelled back at him, and then noticed he wasn’t alone.

 

There were three people with him, all very well dressed, looking like they were from the capitol, or one of the other cities, and were not at all suited for an old barn in  Shikaakwa.  One of them, a rather old man with a heavy beard was speaking into one of those little metal-looking boxes that were supposed to let you talk to someone far away if they had one, too.  

 

Periodically he looked down at his now ruined suede boots with disgust.

 

The woman was a rare beauty, wrapped in heavy white furs and smiling in an amused way at her surroundings. She was probably from Sudan, either Dinka or Nuer, like all of the great lookers  were, with the typical deeply black skin, great height, and those gorgeous scars marking her forehead.  In fact, she was so utterly perfect Nora wondered if she might be the mate of the Jotunn who was the third member of their party.   Or at least his mistress.  

 

There were a few young Jotunn males in Shikaakwa, of course.  They handled what passed for a local government and made certain the quarterly tithes to Jotunheim were shipped out with no fuss, but mostly they kept to themselves in their little enclave, all clearly just dreaming of the day that their period of service in the hinterlands was up and they could either return to the capitol or, in a few cases, the homeworld.  

 

Periodically one of them would take offense at something Midgardian and would kill a young man or two for their amusement (the king fined them for killing females, since they were more valuable both for producing young and because they were generally less trouble), but mostly they counted time, fought each other for pleasure, and stole anything they wanted.

 

But this was grown, warrior Jotnar who towered at least five feet over her father.  With high caste marks on his face and curved, spiralling horns, he was in some way related to the royal family.   He was dressed in the traditional garb of a loin cloth, and metal arm and shin guard, which was pretty rare on Midgard.  He was damned handsome and looked utterly disgusted by everything.

 

Nora looked down at his enormous, heavy feet and couldn’t help herself from snorting.  Even a haughty, capitol city Frost Giant probably wanted for a pair of boots in a pig barn.

 

Her father gave her a quick scowl, and she made her obeisance, like a good subject.  If she was insolent it would get taken out on one of her brothers, and while she wouldn’t cry too many tears for spoiled Liam getting a beating, Sam was the only one at home right now.

 

The beautiful woman gave her an even bigger smile, “ _ Froa  _ Walsh?”

 

Nora couldn’t help it, she snorted again, “Nothing so fine as like that, my lady.  Just plain Nora.”  She climbed out of the stall, wiping her hands on the cloth that hung from the belt of her work-skirt.  She heard the Jotun mutter something, and she remembered just enough of her Sunday classes in Jotnar to recognise the world, “Savage…”

 

To Nora’s everlasting shock, the beauty elbowed him in the thigh - she didn’t reach his gut - and said, “My apologies for Lord Kyrhyn’s rudeness.”

 

“Um, sure,” Nora said, wary.  This was a strange turn of events.

 

The older man took the little box away from his ear and put it in his pocket, “Alright Samiah, everything is set.  The ship is ready to take us back to the capitol as soon as she gathers her, um… belongings,” he said looking at Nora doubtfully.

 

“What?”  Nora and her father said at the same time. Mickey had been unusually quiet, but even his gab would be curtailed by these visitors.  

 

The beauty, Samiah, shook her head with a pained look, “I hadn’t told her yet.”

 

Nora looked at the three of them.  She hadn’t had a chance to wonder what they wanted here and with her yet, and now she had a sinking feeling….

 

Except that possibility was impossible.

 

Samiah put her hands up in a reverent fashion, bowing her head, “Your name came up,  _ Nora _ ,” she said the name carefully, as if she thought it could harm her or she could harm it, “you are to be the new Midgard Queen.”

 

“Well fuck me sideways on a bed of cabbage,” her father said, putting his hand gently on her shoulder.

 

For once, Nora thought, Mickey was entirely right.

  
  


Loki looked at his wedding costume where it waited for him to dress and sighed.

 

He had worn it five times since he had come to Midgard to rule on Laufey’s behalf and it was starting to look a bit tatty to him.  Not that it was not in perfect condition.  His servants knew his standards.  But it was so … 16th century.  Which had not been a high point in Jotun-ruled Midgardian fashion. 

 

Actually, there had been no high points until he had started creating them some time in the 17th century when he realised that if he was going to be stuck on this backwater pit for the rest of his life he was going to have to make some changes.  Which was why Midgard was no longer just a huge breadbasket for Jotunheim but was one of the brightest jewels in his father’s empire.

 

“Majesty?”  His valet said softly.  

 

“No.  Take it away and bring me the black I just had made.  If I am going to be married to some ignorant farm girl with bugs in her teeth and straw in her hair I am at least not going to feel like a museum piece while I do it.”

 

The demonic entity that looked after his person nodded once and whisked the offending garment away.  

 

Loki poured himself a glass of dark wine and sighed.  Whose brilliant idea had it been to placate the Midgardians by having one of their females serve as his consort?  

 

It was his idea, of course, but he rather wished there was someone else he could blame this on.  It had just never occured to him that when he had first picked - randomly for fairness - Jung Soon-ja as his queen that after she died the Midgardians had assumed he would pick another.

 

Soon-ja had been a lovely queen.  Quiet, dignified, from a noble family in Kaesong.   Rather tiny, even by human standards of course, and very pale, but pretty enough.  She had accepted the arrangement as he had put it to her, having been raised to do her duty.

 

(Alright, maybe her choice had not been ENTIRELY random.)

 

Aalyaih had proven that there were at least one group, the Nilotic peoples, who were considered attractive by Jotun standards.

 

Gertuda was from the lands of the former Asgard worshippers, and choosing her (by this time he really was picking them at random from the mandatory human registry he had instituted when he had first arrived) had caused a scandal back home.  

 

Ona had hated him.  Which was fine.  It was not as if they lived together.

 

Eleanor … Eleanor had loved being queen.  Reveled in it.  She lived the high-life in the capitol when she was young, and when she was old she created her own mini-court in the house she retired to in the country.  It was a shame she had been so ugly.  All of that pale skin and blonde hair… 

 

He wondered if the peasant girl would be so in awe of him she would be unable to speak.  That would be ideal.  Loki could not imagine what one might speak to a rustic about.  Corn, perhaps?  

 

It didn’t matter.  After the marriage ceremony, and the wedding night, he would not be seeing her again, barring the odd unavoidable state occasion.  He would send her back to wherever it was she was from - somewhere to the left - where they would build her a little castle and she could move her other peasant relations in with her, and their pigs and dogs and whatever else they had.  Goats, perhaps?

 

When his attendant Ceorl returned with his new raiment, Loki could delay no longer.  With a final, self-indulgent sigh, he called the rest of his servants to prepare him for the wedding.

  
  
  


Nora knew she looked like a yokel, staring open mouthed at everything, but she couldn’t stop.

 

The flight from Shikaakwa to the palace in Mærrsvellby had gone more quickly than she would have thought possible.  The only other time Nora had flown was when as a very small child a pilot from the Midgard Defense Force had come to their  _ skole _ .  Groups of children were taken up one at a time, to see the vast farmlands and the massive inner sea where they lived and worked and died for the greater glory of the Jotun Empire.

 

And in the hopes that some of them would join the defense force when they grew up, since the great Jotun Empire couldn’t waste of the glorious lives of Frost Giants to defend the lives of mere mortals.

 

That brief flight had taught Nora two valuable lessons: there was nothing more boring looking than corn, and flying was terrifying.  

 

But in her dazed state she had gone up in the sleek, blue’d steel airship and taken the over 5,000 mile trip to the capitol without a whimper.  She just sat in the luxurious leather seat, her small canvas bag of personal effects clutched in her hands, staring at nothing.  She hadn’t even noticed when Samiah had draped a purple velvet coat over her shoulders, “It’s going to get very cold.”

 

Nora nodded, not really hearing.

 

She had been gone from the farm in less than fifteen minutes.  The only reason she had been able to say goodbye to Sam and her mother is they had both come in from the bean field when they saw the airship land near the house.  

 

When her father had said something about her family attending the wedding Lord Kyrhyn had given him a quelling look.

 

Nora had read that term in a book once, back when she was younger and still had time to sneak away to the always empty town library and read.  She didn’t know what quelling meant then, and she had never gotten around to looking it up, but now she knew.  

 

Her father had been quelled.  

 

It was the only good thing that had happened all day.

 

How on Midgard had she been picked to be Queen?  It had to be a mistake, because everyone knew the pick was always rigged so the King got a woman from one of the nice families, one of the favored.

 

The King.

 

Loki.

 

She was going to meet the King.

 

At that point she had run to the necessary room that had been pointed out to her at the end of the elegant cabin and been violently ill, tossing up oatmeal and dandelion coffee, finishing just before they landed.

 

Afterwards she was whisked through a frozen airdock by a mass of functionaries and servants, each one clucking over her appearance, how little time they had, how the King wanted the ceremony done quickly.

 

The palace was a blur of light and color and cold.  It was so cold.  Even colder than the airdock had been, since this cold seemed like it was deeply trapped in the stone of the mountain it had been carved from.  When they reached the Queen’s chambers the shock of the warmth of the air, and the moisture, made her slightly light-headed.

 

A very old Jotunn noblewoman, wearing a Midgardian dress and Jotunn arm and shin guards, all of them deceptively simple, was waiting in the chambers impatiently.  She looked Nora up and down, frowning,  “She stinks.  And there is something on her face.”

 

Nora wiped at her mouth and frowned.  Before Samiah could respond, she said, “And she can hear, and speak, and even count to twenty.   Only ten, if she’s wearing shoes.”

 

The Jotunn stared at her for a minute, and Nora briefly wondered if it would be considered an assassination if she was killed  _ before _ being crowned, or if it would just be a murder.  Then the woman broke a smile, like a hard piece of ice cracking and falling into the water, and burst out laughing.

 

“Good, good,” she said, patting Nora on the head lightly, “you might just survive.  Now,”  she clapped her hands and looked sternly at the assembled servers, “a bath, and then get the dress out and see if we can make it fit.  She, I mean our new queen, is quite tiny, and the King wants the ceremony done within the afternoon.”

 

Nora nodded sadly.  She had always been unattractively short.  Her mother had said it was because there had been too many poor harvests when she had been a little girl, but that hadn’t helped with how ugly it had always made her feel.  Especially when paired with her pallid skin. 

 

At least she had dark hair, not black, but dark, so that was something.

 

As she was hustled to the huge bathing chamber, Nora asked the woman - Geror who was to be her majordomo - “Will it be a Jotunn-style wedding?”

 

Geror gave a startled laugh, “Luckily for you, no.”

 

Now, cleaned more thoroughly than ever in her life which she might have enjoyed if she hadn’t been to rushed and embarrassingly aided in the process, scented, her hair braided in elaborate coils with iron and lapis beads, Nora stood very still as several nervous servants cut and sewed the too-large green silk underdress she was wearing.  

 

“At least the overdress laces, meaning we can adjust it, if we can finish hemming it up on time,” Samiah said.  She had already changed into a gold brocade gown that was shockingly short, showing off most of her legs.  Nora wondered how she would keep from freezing in it.

 

“I wish the king had leant us a little of his seidr, the dress could be ready by now.  And I wouldn’t be certain it was going to fall to pieces,”  Geror said, sounding disgusted.

 

“His Majesty has better uses for his power than for a mere-” Samiah started to say tartly and then stopped herself with a smile.  “Apologies, highness.”

 

Nora wondered if she might be the King’s mistress rather than Kyrhyn’s.  Then she was engulfed in dark blue velvet that smelled like old spices and the dress quickly tightened to within an inch of her life.  When she started to wheeze Geror seemed satisfied.

 

Now, as they walked to the throne room, Nora had a chance to gawp at everything and she did.  

 

Each carved room was massive, with ceilings that mimicked the skies, some painted to look like calm, clear nights, others to be storms filled with snow and lightning.  The spaces were sparsely decorated, with few pieces of uncomfortable looking furnishings.  

 

And it was even colder now that she had washed.  When her shivering became audible Geror snapped her fingers and an enormous black cape lined with white fur was gently placed on Nora’s shoulders, a hood pulled over her hair.

 

She was glad she was strong from years of pushing around pigs and carrying sheaves of corn or the weight of all of the fabric could have dropped her to the black marble floor.

 

The throne room was, almost hilariously, larger than even the other rooms, and Nora was surprised that there was no one in the echoing chamber, except for a few Frost Giant figures standing at the far end near the dais leading to the massive throne.  Wasn’t a royal wedding a state occasion?  She remembered seeing images of the making of the last queen, Ona of Hatfield.  There had been throngs of cheering humans and stoic Jotunns.

 

As she recalled from her history class, the wedding fete lasted for thirteen days, with feasts and balls, and any number of other fancy doings.  But Ona had been very queenly - tall, with ebony skin, and her wealthy parents had paid for the procedure to be done at birth so her eyes had red flecks.  

 

The throne room seemed to shrink and Nora started to walk more slowly.  She was about to get  _ married _ !  To the fucking King!  And even if she could have run she had nowhere to go.

 

She knew which one he was even from a distance.  He was notoriously small for a Jotunn, but his gracefully spiraling horns, one of the signs of royal blood, added nearly a foot to his height, and his posture was so straight and perfect he seemed taller.  The elaborate braid of his long, ink-flow of hair hung to just below his waist.

 

He was not in traditional Jotunn garb, Nora was relieved to see.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to see that much of her husband before he was her husband.  Instead he wore a long, black silk kaftan with silver and gold clasps, black leather trews, and high, heavy boots embossed with yet more gold.

 

Studying his clothes was the only way to keep herself from looking at his face.  

 

When they finally reached the dais, he took a quick step towards her, “Mistress Nora?”

 

His voice was a deep hush and she tried not to sigh.  Instead she steeled herself to look him in the face.

 

With a gulp.

 

The king was even more utterly beautiful than the images of him in the papers and on the screens.  Much more so than in the pictures she had carefully preserved and hidden from her brothers, knowing they would laugh at her having such a ridiculous crush.

 

“Your Majesty-” she started to choke out.

 

He leaned down, leaned close, so he was also covered by the deep hood she wore, and whispered in her ear, the cold of his breath making her shiver, “You, my dainty queen, may call me Loki.”

  
  


At the end of the ceremony, (which was an amalgam of various human rituals, including a silken rope binding the bride and grooms hands together, matching flower crowns - Loki’s was made of fake flowers as real ones would freeze black on touching his skin - lighting candles, and all sorts of other heavy-handed symbolic acts) the king and queen drank from a large chalice of black-fruited ice wine from Jotunheim.  

 

“Only a small sip, yes?”  He said to the girl.  To Nora.  “It is very strong, and I am guessing they forgot to feed you.”

 

She nodded, giving him a ghost of a smile.

 

For some reason, he wanted to see a full smile on her face.  

 

By any normal standard of beauty she was a plain little thing, pasty-skinned and smooth featured.  The top of her head barely came up to his chest.  Her hands were chapped and rough with work, her mouth large, and her hair … actually, her hair was decent enough.  But the rest of her…

 

So why could he not stop staring at her?  Why was he suddenly dying to see the rest of that fair skin, to watch it flush?  To see that mouth open and panting?  To move that small body from position to position, moving and pleasuring her at his will?

 

If he was having a proper Jotunn wedding he would already be in her, and her sweet cunt would be dripping and pulling him in further as he brought her to the first of what would be days of climaxes.

 

Good gods!  Where had that idea come from?  These little sham marriages were fine for Midgard, but would never lower himself to take a mortal for his actual mate.  

 

It had been three days since he had last taken anyone to his bed.  That calamity had to be the reason for his unseemly desire for this little provincial.  

 

That and her very lickable neck.

 

And her bitable breasts.

 

And her -

 

Loki made a mental note to tell Ceorl cancel the small feast that was planned for after the ceremony.  

 

The new Queen would be eating in his private chambers tonight.  

 

His feast would come afterwards.


	2. “Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.” - AS Byatt

Nora said yes. 

And then they were married. 

She waited for a moment for the king to kiss her but rather he took her hand, the cold of his making her bones ache, and turned her to the tiny group that stood behind them. Geror, Samiah, that bearded man whose name she had never been told, Lord Kyrhyn who was attended by several younger Jotunn guards in traditional dress, and a handful of other humans and Giants, all of whom looked ready to get on with the rest of their day.

So, no thirteen days of fetes, she guessed. 

“Your new queen,” the king said, inclining his head towards her and everyone bowed. Even Kyrhyn, who also rolled his eyes. 

“Shall we take her majesty back to her chambers, my king?” Samiah asked.

“No. Her majesty is clearly in need of a meal and perhaps some rest, which has gone unnoticed by both you and my aunt. I will attend to her myself.” 

Samiah gulped and her eyes dropped. “My deepest apologies, my queen,” she said, bowing to Nora. 

“And that wasn’t at all because you told us to hurry this whole thing along, was it, nephew?” Geror’s voice was tart and annoyed. 

Loki’s quelling look put Kyrhyn’s to shame, and even Geror lowered her eyes.

“Come along… Nora, was it?” He said, his long strides meaning she had to lift her skirts with her one free hand and practically run to keep up with him. It made her feel moderately better that the guards had to do the same, in spite of their long legs.

The king’s chambers were luckily not far from the throne room, since by the time they entered through the two enormous brass-bound doors Nora was worn out. Her whole body had been tense with fear and cold the entire ceremony, and she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything but that one sip of burningly sweet and heavy wine for nearly half the day. Still, on entering the king’s rooms, she let out a gasp, her hand falling from his freezing grip.

She shook out her fingers and walked around, staring.

The outer chamber was the size of her family’s house, with a lit fireplace, large enough to roast a whole ox, the floors covered in furs and brilliantly colored wool rugs patterned with flowers and shapes and that felt wonderful under the thin shoes that had left her toes and heels icy. Low couches were scattered here and there, and an enormous desk took up most of a corner.

And the walls… they were covered in books. Shelves of them, towering to the ceiling on every bit of space. Some of them were piled on the floors in front of the cases, there being no room for more. 

More books than could possibly be.

Before she could think, she rested the tips of her fingers upon the spines of the nearest shelf, as if not certain they were real. 

“They’re called books. One reads them,” the king said idly from where he was leaning over his desk to look at some papers.

“Buuuccks? Boo - boooks? Am I saying that right? Books?” She said, using her flattest, farmerest voice. “Ain’t never heard of no books. Looks like they’d make a fine little fire though. Boooks. What’ll you city folk think of next?” 

He looked up at her sharply, his eyes matching the color of the fire.

Damn! He was the king! She was going to have the shortest reign in history if she didn’t keep quiet, but she’d never learned that lesson. 

He turned, resting against the desk. “When did you last eat? I feel that hunger is impairing your judgement.”

“Oh, round four when I got up.”

“Ceorl!” He called to the other room, “Has the queen’s sustenance arrived? I fear for her continual good health should she not fill her mouth soon,” he said, now quelling her.

“Yes, sire,” came a human voice from the other room.

 

In a few moments Nora was in the king’s bedchamber, seated by yet another fire, which she realised were probably only lit for her comfort, tucking into the largest meal she had ever seen. The king’s valet, a solemn little man with greyish hair and skin, filled a plate for her. Cheeses, bits of meat (of which she only recognised the bacon), cooked and raw fruits, small slices of several different breads. “Please let me know which of these meets your favor, majesty,” he said, gently laying a silk napkin over her lap. Probably worried about her ruining the dress, she thought. 

He then gestured to the silver flatware next to the plate, “These are for-”

Nora shook her head, staring at the sky. She feeling nauseous with hunger, and was still scared, but right now she was just getting mad. “I KNOW what they are!”

Then she promptly ignored them, picking up a piece of the whitest, finest looking bread imaginable, wrapped it around a wedge of cheese that was streaked with grey and blue, and jammed it into her mouth. 

And moaned.

The king, who had seated himself across from her, away from the fire, looked up from the papers he brought with him, his gaze sharp and inscrutable. “Are you well?”

Great. Now she was confirming everyone’s thoughts about her being a yokel. “Yes, my king, it’s just this is very good.”

He frowned at her, “Loki.”

“Loki,” she said for the first time. Slowly, as if afraid it would hurt her. “Loki,” she said, this time more firmly. “I’ll remember.”

He nodded and went back to his reading.

It took all of Nora’s concentration to not moan again, or groan, or make any of the noises she wanted to make as she ate delicious thing after delicious thing, most of them strange to her, all of them wonderful. Ceorl served her hot tea made with herbs that smelled like medicine and honey in a very delicate cup covered in blue vines and flowers, and from time to time she had to pick it up and hold it to keep her fingers from trembling with cold.

Once she had eaten enough to no longer feel sick and shaky, Nora was able to sneak looks at the king, who was fully absorbed in his work. 

His skin was the color of snow at twilight on a clear day, when it reflected the sky. Each raised mark was a perfect line or swooping curve, each creating a small shadows of darker blues across his lovely features - the fine line of his nose, the wing of his brow, the high, sharp angle of his cheek bone. There was another that disappeared down into the high collar of his tunic. And one that she could see peeking out from under his cuff when he turned a page.

The coil of his black horns gleamed, and she realised they had been lightly brushed with a darkly iridescent dust that caught the light in with a dark rainbow. 

What a silly girl she was, mooning over him like a child. She was past twenty and had been a married woman for nearly an hour, Nora laughed at herself mentally. 

But how she longed to see his hair! But it was ruthlessly pulled back into that elaborate braid.

Speaking of which, now that she had thawed somewhat, and was no longer trying to will her growling stomach to be silent, her head was starting to hurt. The mass of beaded braids that had her hair had been tortuously twisted into were tight and pulling.

Trying to rub under them just made it worse.

“Are those bothering you?” 

His voice was so soft and dark, like something you would fall asleep on, and have very busy dreams.

“They’re pulling,” she answered, embarrassed.

He stood and stepped in front of her, offering his hand. She took it, bracing for the cold, but it wasn’t there. Astonished, she stared at it, her fingers unconsciously tracing the thick line of callus across the palm. “Why?”

“The tea was… improved. The effects last for about two days, so let us not waste our time.” He pushed the hood off of her, which she no longer needed as she was quite warm, and gently placed his hands over her hair.

There was a small glow of silver, and then a great relief as the braids fell apart, showering her shoulders and breasts in jeweled beads. Before Nora could thank him, Loki had pulled her forward, so her forehead rested on his chest and worked his fingers through her hair to firmly massage her scalp. 

Nora jerked. It had been years since anyone had touched more of her than her hand, or maybe a clap to the shoulder. It felt raw. 

His other arm wrapped around her, holding her still when she tried to pull away.

“Be still,” he said firmly. 

She stopped moving, accepting the act and finding herself melting into the pleasure of it. “You make the prettiest sounds, my tiny queen, purring and sighing. When you eat. When you are being petted. I could become quite greedy for those noises.”

From where she leaned on his chest, she could feel his voice as much as hear it.

Something about being so relaxed and yet awake made Nora speak thoughtlessly, “Could I touch your...hair, too?”

A small bark of a laugh bumped into her. “My hair?”

“Please?”

“Whatever my queen desires, my queen shall have,” he said, the laugh still in his voice. He took her hands and pulled them to wrap around his braid, her forearms bracketed by his horns. She rubbed her wrists along them, and she felt him stiffen a bit. “I’m sorry, should I-” she tried to pull her hands away, but he held them easily.

“No. It is a specific intimacy to touch your ma-, to touch someone’s horns. I generally do not allow it, but since you are my consort… Now, to my hair.”

The thick, fishtail braid fell apart in her hands, leaving her with hands full of glory, soft and strong and everything Nora had dreamt of as a girl. 

Her hands fisted convulsively, and she used his hair to pull his fine, thin mouth down onto hers.

 

Jotunns did not kiss. 

It had never been a part of their culture.

Loki had taught himself the art at a young age, when his travels had taken him from Jotunheim and he had learned that kissing was part of the erotic currency of most of the universe. He grew beyond mere proficiency at it, refusing to be anything but the best at such a basic carnal skill, but it was far from what he would prefer to do with his mouth most of the time.

Nora was clearly a kissing enthusiast. Not an expert in anyway, but one who indulged for the pure love of the thing.

And she was persuading him to reassess his thoughts on the activity.

The soft, hot cave of her mouth was sweet, not from the cakes she had eaten, but from her own very self. Like that applewood and rosemary scent that came from her already flushed skin. Loki felt his eyes flutter closed, wanted to only absorb as much of her as he could through his flesh and tongue. He teased her, kissing softly so they barely touched, then deeply so they only breathed each other’s lives, then with no art at all, only the same clawing need that caused Nora to pull his hair and bite lip.

She pushed her tender body hard enough into him to hurt herself, her heat burning through his clothing, searing his skin. He expected the silk to catch fire, leaving them both garbed only in ash and coils of smoke.

Forcing himself back under control, Loki pulled his mouth away, smiling down at her, “Have you ever been intimate before? With another creature, I mean.”

Again, unable to stop herself, his new queen snorted and answered baldly, “As if? Do you know how much armour costs? Let alone the pills?” Then she blanched beneath the rosy flush on her cheeks, “I mean -, no your majesty.”

Of course he knew. He had set the prices outrageously high to a purpose. When he had first come to Midgard the population levels were dangerously low after a few centuries under the rule of a succession of military governors. They needed bodies to work the fields and tend the animals, so he had done everything possible to encourage large families. Even now, after ages of his good work, there were always shortages in the country, but he could not actually outlaw contraception since he did not want the privileged families to get too large, so he simply made it ruinously expensive for the poor.

And therefore a status symbol for the wealthy.

Problem solved.

And yet, he could not imagine a female as clearly desirous as Nora had done nothing.

“Surely some lusty lad took you for a walk in the dark at some point?” He whispered, trailing the words on her skin, his lips brushing her long throat down to her shoulder, and then the tip of his tongue licking back up, singeing himself with the pleasure of it.

She writhed against him, “Pat did, when I was girl, years ago.”

“And what did Pat do?” His hands found the too tight laces holding the oversized dress onto her body, and when he loosened them her groaning exhale made him want to just toss her skirts up, bend her over the divan, and rut like a beast.

“We kissed some. Petted some. I… oh,” her voice hitched when he removed the heavy garment, leaving her in only the thin green silk undergown and began to rub her back in soothing circles while he bit gently through the fabric covering the tops of her sweet little breasts. 

He made a mental note to give Samiah a reward for remembering to forget to supply undergarments. 

“And then, I... I… ahh... I did for him.”

“And he?”

“He what?” She sounded confused.

Astonishing. 

“Let me show you,” he said, welcoming the distraction of a little teaching to give him a chance to bring himself back under control.

 

Nora was naked and laying on the largest bed in the world. 

Literally.

She had read about it in a magazine once.

She felt so self-consciously pale and little, her skin too smooth, her legs too short, but when she had tried to pull a cover over herself the king had given her a stern ‘no.’ So now she lay there, miserable, as he looked down at her, his head cocking from side to side as if uncertain as to how something like this had ended up in his bed.

He sat beside her, “Spread your legs.”

“I know what you… I’ve done this before myself.”

“As you should,” he said, “but it is not the same.”

Before she could or couldn’t, he did it himself, not roughly, but with no fanfare. “This is what your selfish young man should have done. The least he should have done.” 

His fingers now trailed up the inside of her leg, to the knee, then the thigh, and then to between them. He leaned forward, his other hand on the pillow beside her head so his face was just above hers, so he could watch. “You have truly pretty eyes Nora, bright and clear,” he said, distracting her with his beautiful voice and unrealistic flattery while his fingers found the most private part of her and took it over.

“I knew you would be hot to my touch. You have already burned me over and over, your mouth, your skin. I am as vulnerable to you as you are to me it seems. Perhaps I needed to save some of magic for myself to keep from being covered in scars where our skin meets.” 

His voice was calm, almost emotionless, but as he spoke, he stroked the pad of one finger gently across the little bud that hid in behind the curls there. When she touched it herself it felt good, and then it felt very good, and then it felt wonderful.

His touch began at wonderful and grew to unbearable. She wanted to close her legs around his hand and keep it there forever, but she stayed still, making herself look at him.

“I am almost afraid to touch inside of you. It would be like walking into an inferno.”

He was not afraid. That one lovely finger trailed lower. Nora felt sweat trickle down her cheek, and quick as a snake Loki leaned into lick it while working his touch into her. Now he stayed close, their faces separated by little more than the space of a kiss. 

His finger twisted in her, and then out, and then back in, joined by another, barely fitting within her. The way she felt herself open and stretch for him ...

Her hips arched. She needed him to touch her everywhere at once. “Like sinking into a steaming bath,” he said, his eyes closing for moment. 

The pad of his thumb took over stroking that tender place at the top of her sex, moving faster.

“Please. Harder,” she needed it harder. It was all she could to not reach down and push his hand against her until it hurt and humping it and proving she was just as crude as everyone here thought she was.

“Normally I like to draw matters out,” he said, brushing his mouth back and forth over hers, dipping his tongue in and out to tickle the delicate skin on the inside of her lips. “Consider this a wedding present.”

Loki cupped the back of her neck, pulling her up so they were both seated and kissing, and it changed how his fingers were positioned in her, giving her that aching pressure she wanted and pushing his fingers to a place that made her feel frail and overwhelmed. 

When the peak took her, Nora clung to Loki, terrified of being thrown off of the surface of the world, and she shook so hard that for just a moment she thought he was shaking as well.


	3. It Is a Pleasure to Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wedding night part 2

Loki pressed his bride’s shuddering body to him as she disappeared into her pleasure.

He was glad that she was gone for a few moments, her arms only weakly holding on, her face buried against his neck where her panting breath boiled across his skin, her mind empty, so that he could compose himself in privacy.

What exactly was this mortal … girl doing to him!

In the early centuries of his life, Loki had traveled as widely as he could and learned as many lessons as life could find to teach him, and the one lesson that was true on every planet, of every sentient species, was that sex was power. The ability to give and demand pleasure was one of the fastest and simplest ways to gather sovereignty over another creature. 

Once he had had scores of lovers, each of them offering him some advantage, even if it was only in an increase in his skills. After being sent to Midgard by the Emperor he had used those talents along with his more mystic and mental gifts (and the odd knife to the back, of course) to solidify his power and to be able to force his father to give him the title of King. 

Once that had happened, he had sworn to himself that he would only bed Jotunns. 

Nothing was as pleasing as seducing one from his own scornful race. How they hated themselves for succumbing to him, and then crawling back for more. Haughty females from the best families who assumed he must be a bastard, who would howl with shame and gratification. Arrogant, rough males who laughed at his height and at his pretty features, who would sigh and blush with ecstasy. Warriors of both genders were his favorites to defeat both in the battle-circle and then in his bed.

And, apart from the ritual wedding night with each of his brides, he had kept that vow. The same discipline that had placed him upon a throne when his father would once have happily left him for dead, worked to keep him from falling into temptation even when his most seductive former lovers should periodically appear in his court. The Midgardians themselves were of little enough interest to him, even the great beauties like Samiah and her sister Tye.

Which is why it made no sense that from the moment he had seen her, seen this Nora, that he had wanted her. And that now, having not even bedded her yet, having only barely introduced her to the very farthest outskirts of the borders of the kingdom of bliss, he already knew that he -

No. 

Besides, while the girl was fresh, and deliciously unembarrassed in her responsiveness, and made sounds that would make a eunuch hard, her complete lack of experience would no doubt bore him almost immediately. 

Loki composed himself and let her go. She fell softly backwards from his arms, her hair a mess, the little makeup that had remained on her face after dining was smeared everywhere, including on his caftan, the sweat on her flushed skin rolling onto his sheets. 

She should have looked dreadful to him

She did not.

When she reached up to touch him he grabbed her hand and held her palm to his mouth, pressing kisses and biting her mound of Venus hard enough to mark and make her hiss, all the while hastily undoing the silver clasps on his raiment with the other. 

“Can… Can I …?” Nora touched the open front of his tunic.

“You wish to disrobe me, little queen?”

Loki expected her to blush and stammer, but when she smiled up at him, her eyes bright and mischievous, nodding. He stood, arms wide, “Very well.”

Standing as well, she traced her fingertips up his chest, leaving trails of intense heat where she lightly traced his marks, following as they circled up to his shoulders where she pushed the silk from his shoulders. He watched her face as she followed the course of her hands, her eyes devouring him. Loki had had many lovers admire his body before, as it was excessively admirable, but there was an eloquent need in her gaze that was new to him.

Afterwards, rather than moving on to his trews, she ran her fiery touch up and down his arms, scorching the fine, sensitive skin on the inside of his forearms, pressing each palm in turn to his hard enough to melt their flesh together. 

With his former queens, Loki had always seen quickly to their needs and to the consummation, the excessive heat of their bodies making the experience unpleasant for him almost immediately. How Midgardians burned! They were living metaphors for their own brief lives. 

But Nora’s touch was ambrosial. The heat of it teaching his skin to want still more. For the first time he understood cold.

Now her hands were behind him, stroking the muscles of his back, her face nuzzling his chest, her voice muffled, “If I am only going to have tonight I want everything you can give me.”

“Making demands of me?” Loki said, pushing her head up to meet his gaze, “You forget yourself.”

“You make me forget myself. And I know that soon, probably tomorrow, you are going to stick me in some palace somewhere and forget me too, except when you need to have picture taken, or for the odd ceremony, and that no one will ever be brave enough to try and touch me since I belong to you. So yeah, I am demanding.” She stepped away from him, and gave him a smile that filled her eyes with brightness, “I’m a fucking queen, you know.”

Then she laughed at the look on his face until she snorted, no doubt like one of the hogs she cared for on that farm.

In Jotunn there was a word for the both completely hollow and utterly full sensation one felt upon seeing your child for the first time. There was a word for the overwhelming need one felt to embrace the members of your warband after the end of the battle. There was a word that translated into “the intensity of watching snow fall in the darkness with your closest sibling,” and one that meant, “how you feel when an elder smiles at you with understanding and approval.” 

But there was no word for what the humans, the Aesir, the Vanir, and most other creatures called love. The closest word in Jotunn was ciqu, or “The thing which is the reason that a mate is chosen, other than because our families desire it and it will make our warband unconquerable.”

Yet, in spite of there being no word for it in the language of his thoughts, when Nora laughed at him, Loki sensed he was going to fall in love with her if he did not act quickly to avert it. There could be no other explanation for how he did not wish to punish her for her insolence, but rather wanted to do everything possible to encourage it.

Confused and more than a little alarmed, he needed to get back onto solid ground and to clear his thoughts. Surely once he had her he would be more rational. If nothing else the near acid-heat of her virginal, mortal cunt would surely end these peculiar sentiments.

Loki took her hand again, “I thought you wished to disrobe me. I find these an irritation,” he said, rubbing her palm along the butter-soft, black suede covering his cock, which craved her touch. He then moved her fingers to the leather thong that held his trews closed, “Unlace me, your majesty,” he said, with a bow of his head.

Now she looked serious, and a little nervous. Excellent. But her hands were quick and clever, and when she was finished he practically jumped into her open hand.

 

Nora tried not to gulp and goggle like an inexperienced girl. She had held a boy’s business before. More than a few times. Once she had even put her mouth on it, when Pat had begged and she had finally just wanted him to shut up.

But that had been very different.

Apparently his majesty had one fully Jotunn-sized attribute and it scared the hell out of her. 

Her mind, at any rate. Her body, no longer relaxed after the boneless state he had taken her to but utterly excited by being able to touch him at her will, thought that it was perfect. 

It was perfect, and intimidating, just like the rest of him.

“My boots?” He said, raising an eyebrow.

Right. She had asked to undress him.

Kneeling at his feet, he seemed a long way up there. Small for a Frost Giant still meant huge by any human standard. She looked up his endless legs and past the heavy, indigo-dark erection that pointed to the skies, and he gave her a half-smile and a nod.

One thing a farm girl could do was get a pair of boots off in no time, no matter how complex the buckles and straps. His hand rested on her shoulder as she pulled them from his elegant, long feet. Then she worked her fingers under the tight waist of his open trews and wiggled them down with no help from him.

The man had probably never dressed himself a day in his life or he wouldn’t have worn those things, she thought. 

The same markings that covered his upper body continued down his legs and around his… him… all of the way to the tops of his feet. He was not as heavily marked as many Jotunn’s were, being of royal blood, but they still fascinated her and she traced upwards to the logical conclusion.

But when she touched between his legs, cupping his testicles, he moved her hand again, “Not yet. You asked for everything,” and with a hard shove she was back on the bed, her legs dangling. “Seeing you at my feet made me hungry.”

Then he knelt, and Nora’s heart nearly exploded. He was the king! It never even occurred to her that his knees bent like that! Of course he could sit down. She had always loved the pictures of him sitting on the throne, legs aggressively wide. And she had just seen him sitting next to-

“Críosta Folach!” She screamed, committing the double crime of speaking both a human language AND referring to a human deity. But it couldn’t be helped or stopped. His mouth, his beautiful mouth was between her legs and he was licking her, not just out but in, his thumbs holding her wide as he took all of her. 

Lifting his head, his face flushed dark from the heat of her body, he gave her a serious look, a terrifying frown lowering his gull-wing brow, “Were you any other than my consort I would have you thrown into the blackest oubliette in beneath this mountain for even knowing such words. Because you are my consort your punishment is that I will force you to scream them over and over again.”

Then he unwrapped her fists from where they were balled in the silken sheets and wrapped them instead about his horns, just where they sprang from his hair, shuddering and preening for a moment at the eagerness of her grip before bending back to his task.

Now at least she understood why Pat had made such a big fuss over having her down there. Once you felt something like this how could you ever think about anything else? Even as Loki’s adept tongue delicately tickled that sweet, melting nub and then circled it, suckling lightly and pulling her soul out of her body in a yell profane and human enough to condemn her entire family to forced labour, she was already thinking of how to persuade him to do it again.

She needn't have bothered, for he clearly had no plans to leave that place any time soon. Instead, he hooked her legs over his shoulders so he could work his tongue deep within her, kissing her cunt as he had her mouth, with long, heavy licks that had her shifting her hips from side to side and running her hands up and down the coiled ridges of his glorious horns.

Now that agile thing found that place inside of her that his fingers had played with and began to urgently massage it, making her tremble first inside and then out and down her legs until her whole body shook. She was still shouting but now just obscene sounds and she felt herself flood into his waiting mouth as she fell into too much pleasure to easily make her way back..

 

Loki pulled away from his little wife as the weight of her peak overwhelmed her, and before he knew what he was doing was rubbing the base of his horns against the conflagration between her legs, scenting himself with her and her with him.

He jerked away in shock.

It was one of the ways a member of the Jotnar aristocracy marked a mate as taken. He had never considered such an act, and to do it with one who was not a Jotunn was unheard of, possibly illegal, certainly sacrilegious. 

It was worse when he realized he did not care.

He told himself it was because he was a king, and above the petty morals of lesser creatures, but he knew better.   
He did not care because he just wanted it, and he so rarely did what he wanted. Everything was duty, knowing that Laufey and the rest of his court would use any slip on his part to divest him of the power he had fought for.

She-, Nora. Nora was looking at him, her eyes slightly dazed and a little worried, “Is something wrong? Did I do something I shouldn’t have?”

For the first time that funny, defensive confidence of her’s slipped a little and he could see an overwhelmed, still very young woman who had been taken from everything she knew and tossed into the arms of the most dangerous creature in her world. 

There and then he decided that that was where she would stay.

He helped her the rest of the way onto the bed and then crawled over her, jailing her with his body, blanketing them both with his hair, “You were perfect,” he said as his cock nudged its way between her labia, gently rubbing against her overly aroused clitoris.. Her eyes closed with a musical hitch of her breath, and she unconsciously offered him her neck, which he took, biting where it met her shoulder. At the same moment he thrust into the furnace of her body.


	4. The Cold of Winter Gives Sweetness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter, in which only one thing happens

The pain was excruciating.  Within a second, less than a second, a heartbeat, Nora had gone from the afterglow of way more pleasure than she thought existed in the world to absolute agony.

She was impaled on the king and there was nothing she could do about it.

When her body’s natural reaction had been to back away, to scoot up those fluffy, lovely pillows and Get. Him. Out. Of. Her. 

Instead she had found herself immobile, the king using no apparent effort to keep her in place.  Though he was the smallest frost giant, he was still as strong as any other one might be.  Maybe stronger.  Those lovely muscles that she had been enjoying touching before were now a prison.

It hurt worse to struggle, but her body was panicking, ignoring what her mind was trying to tell her.

And all of the while, the king simply looked at her, impassive, thoughtful.

He pushed further in and she cried out.

He bent down, his hair veiling her face, a soft, echoing ‘shhhhh’ sound where the tips of his horns brushed the ornate, iron headboard, his mouth close to her ear, soft and sinister, full of warning, but then tender and crooning, “Try and be still.  You have to grow used to me.  I know it hurts, I know.  I promise to make it better, but just breathe now and feel how you adapt, how you come accept it.   Your body longs to comply with mine.”

She made a sound that she hoped sounded like yes.

“Follow me,” he said, taking a slow, deep breath and letting it out.  She mimicked him as closely as she could until they shared a rhythm and she felt herself start to loosen.  He still didn’t move, but the pressure of his body as their breaths rose and fell together caused a gentle, satisfying rubbing to happen where they met.  “You see?  It’s better already.  I can feel you getting wetter, getting softer, and more welcoming around me.  Your legs are still trembling, but now it is because of a beautiful ache you are starting to feel rather than from that terrible wound I have given you.  I’m going to start moving now.  Just a little.  If it hurts in a way that frightens you must tell me and I shall stop.”

He pushed up so she could see his face, see his seriousness.  “You understand, little queen?  My Nora?”

There was a kindness to his expression that seemed out of place with Jotunn features, and she felt herself nod, her body acting on its own again.

He moved within her, just the smallest flick of movement from his lean hips as they skimmed the inside of her thighs and his huge prick slid just the tiniest bit within her.  Although still delicate there, it didn’t feel bad to her.  It didn’t feel good, either.  

It felt...

It felt… necessary.  Like a thing that had to happen.  A thing that neither of them had a choice in.  Which she supposed was true in a way.  

No, she thought, a last gasp at coherence as he reached down and angled her hips higher against him and then touched between them, not necessary.  

Inevitable.  

She must going mad - certainly everything that happened to her seemed like nothing but a prolonged fever dream - but it felt inevitable.

Then his fingers between them found their way, and she went the rest of the way out of her mind.

 

Loki held himself in check, using every bit of the adamantine discipline he has used throughout his life to keep from simply plowing into the girl … into Nora, like some wild beast driven on by his mate’s coming into season.  

He had known that, prepared or not, she would be hurt.  Normally when he took one of his brides he would use a simple seidr to ease his way, to make sure that their required coupling would be nothing but a simple, as brief as he could manage, pleasure for them before sending them on their way.

But he wanted to hurt Nora.  Just this once he wanted her to feel everything as it really was and not as magic and trickery could make it.  He wanted the pain, and then the discomfort, and then the ecstasy to all come from the two of them at their most elemental selves. 

Their bodies alone.

And if he was to hurt, then she would too.

He burned.  His cock, deep and tightly embraced within the oven of her cunt, was mad for more of it.  His limbs shook, just a touch, at the strain of holding himself calm when all he wanted to do was crush her beneath his chest and bruise her pale thighs.

Instead he undulated, letting changes of pressure inside of her, and outside where his fingers pushed on her eager clit, drive her farther from her thoughts and closer to her peak.

For a moment he thought he was crying from the strain when he felt something roll down his face where it landed on the hollow of Nora’s throat.

She froze in shock, “I didn’t know Jotunn’s could sweat.”

Nor had he.

Clearly his body was having some kind of breakdown from her heat and from how much he wanted to burn.

More and more and more.  

He licked the spot.  His sweat was cold and clean.

Nora moaned at his tongue touching even such an innocent place.

Unbearable.

Now he started to thrust harder, carefully watching her face.  She tangled her fingers in his hair where it curtained them, and stared back at him, mouth open, breathing ragged, waiting and wild for what he would give her.

He stopped caressing between her legs and instead reached under her to angle her body so he could…

Yes, there was a glazed look in her eyes as he found another of her secrets.  

Now he stopped holding back, knowing that she would hurt afterwards but needing right now… right fucking now… to take them both to their conclusion together.

 

Nora’s hips arched into the curve of Loki’s and they cried out at the same moment, her voice twining about his like a vine upon a tree.

 

When he finally returned to himself, Loki jerked off her body, it suddenly occurring to him that he could actually crush her to death.

“Are you… did I harm you?”  He asked.  Her eyes were closed and there was an almost grim set to her mouth.  

Slowly that grimness turned to a weary smile, and her bright, brown eyes opened, “Yup.  I’ll never be the same.”

And then she lifted her head from the pillows, pushing her mouth against his.  

“Nor will I, little treasure,” he thought to himself, as he languidly kissed his bride, his newly clear thoughts and besotted brain already scheming as to how to keep her with him, and to still keep her safe.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. A King Can’t Stay in Bed Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora gets some sleep, Loki goes to work

Nora rolled over in her sleep.

Her arm didn’t fall off the edge of the bed.  Instead it landed on a soft, velvety cushion, which her hand unconsciously stroked and squeezed.  The strangeness of it woke her just a bit.  Enough for her to feel the slide of smooth, ridiculously smooth and… she didn’t even have words for the feeling of the cloth that was covering her naked skin.

Which was naked.

She sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest, staring wildly at the vast room, and then fell backwards with a moan.

That was right.  She was the queen now.  And her body was in a great deal of pain. 

Most of it radiated from between her legs where she could feel every muscle screaming from strain and all of her flesh, from the inside of her thighs to so deep within her that it was an area of herself that was more an idea than a fact before now, was tender and irritated and just hurt.

Nora turned her head from side to side and then carefully sat back up with a grunt, looking for the king.  He didn’t appear to be in the bed with her any longer, but it was large enough that she may just have lost him somewhere.  When she was sure he wasn’t there, she gingerly lay back down.

Laying there, she looked around the King’s bedchamber.  The small fire in the massive hearth gave off a little light, as did a few candles that hung here and there in elaborate iron holders along the top of the high stone walls.  There was a copper candelabrum filled with multicolored glass hanging above the room, but it was not lit.

There were glass doors decorated with copper arabesques to one side, showing only blackness, but they shook from time to time as a gust of wind struck them, a bit of it sighing through the fine gap between them.  That bit of wind, the soft hiss of the fire, and her breath were the only noises in the large room.  

Nora was used to noise.  A small house with four other people, three of them men and therefore taking up more space than they needed - not just the physical space but the quiet and the air itself - and all five of them talking, sneezing, clearing throats.  With that many people someone was always making some kind of sound. The thin wooden walls and floors loudly complaining of their age and the weather and the near endless movement of the people who lived there.  Every old window rattling in its frame not from raging storms, but from the merest breeze.  

The endless cacophony of pigs and goats from the moment the sun rose to the not much quieter rustle of their many bodies against each other in the night.

Chickens from the Stewart farm, constantly escaping and making a fuss.

The quiet here was heavy.  A bit frightening.  It was in the stone of the mountain with nothing but still more stone and silence around her.

She wouldn’t be here long enough to get used to it, she thought.

Cautiously rolling over, wincing a bit, Nora hoped to fall back to sleep.

It wouldn’t happen.  Too much strangeness, too much quiet, too much of her body not knowing what time it was and just hurting.

She needed to pee.

At the same time she needed something to drink.

And she was a little afraid to get out of bed.

There was still a pitcher of water on the table near the fireplace where she had eaten before, and she was fairly certain that one of the doors led to a water closet.   It was probably high treason to wet the king’s bed, so she made herself get out up, looking around for something to put on.  All of the clothing they had removed before was gone.  Nora realised that His Majesty’s servant had probably come into the room at some point to pick up things and clear the rest of the food away.

Well, that might be embarrassing.  She hoped she hadn’t snored.  Liam always claimed she could shake the house down, and Mickey backed him, but their mother and Sam both said they were lying.  Which was almost always true.  But she couldn’t be sure.

Nora’s whole body turned quite red at the thought that the King might have heard her snore.  

Maybe she was so loud she had driven the poor Jotunn from his own bed?  She imagined him getting up in disgust, sending that strange, grey little man into the room to clean up while he found somewhere peaceful to finish out the night.

She laughed at the thought and then ended in another groan.  That hurt a lot, tugging at places that she wanted left alone for the moment.

Walking with as light of a step as she could, feeling fragile, Nora was happy there were heavy rugs on the floor.  Even though she wasn’t cold - the tea still seemed to be working - it was lovely to feel something soft beneath her feet.  Wincing with discomfort by the time she reached the first, dark wooden door, she was disappointed to find it was a smaller room where the King seemed to keep his clothing.  

Actually, the room wasn’t small at all, just rather narrow.  She couldn’t see the far end of it.  When she playfully called out “hello?” it echoed and echoed and echoed and echoed, not stopping…

Nora slammed the door shut.

The next door led to another huge room, this one holding the king’s... Cistern?  Pond?  The King had a pond inside of the castle?  

Shaking her head, Nora went to the last door.

Fortunately Nora had seen fancy necessary rooms when she had gone to school, so she recognised it when she opened the last door, and she knew how to use it.  This one was lavish and elegant, made of luminous stone and gleaming metal, but she wasn’t able to appreciate it.   

All of the pain she had felt earlier became worse and then somewhat better after the fact of urinating.  When she went to clean herself she was surprised to see no blood.  Everything down there seemed in order.

Which meant the King had probably had his servant clean her as well.

That thought deserved a gulp, so she gave one.

Back in the bedchamber, Nora poured herself a goblet of water.  It was colder and cleaner than any water she had tasted before, but she didn’t want to cramp up so she made herself drink slowly.

When the doors to the balcony opened she nearly dropped the goblet onto her bare feet.

The King entered from what looked to be a massive storm, naked, with snowy wind writhing lovingly around his beautiful skin, ice crystals adorning his horns and his hair.

All of which was a splendid and highly detailed afterthought for Nora, who found herself gaping at his enormous, half-hard cock where it lazed against his thighs. 

“Yup, that was in me.  I am very lucky to be alive right now.”  She thought.

Then she noticed the surprise on his face, his mouth a little open, his brow creased.  It was adorable.

“I am losing my mind.  The King is adorable.”  She thought again.

They stared at each for a long time.  Finally, the King spoke.

“Apologies.  I thought you would still be asleep.  You were very worn.  You did not even stir when I washed you,” he spoke in a low tone, walking towards her with slow, elegant motions but at an angle, as if approaching a spooked horse.  

He had washed her.  Himself.  With his own royal hands.  

Nora suddenly felt as if her  _ body  _ was… important in some way.  

When he reached her, he carefully slid his hand along her cheek, cupping her chin, “You look very tired,” his scarlet eyes were only faintly luminous instead of burning and she wondered if that meant he was tired, too.

“I’m always kind of tired,” she answered honestly, before she could stop herself.

“That saddens me,” he said, kissing her forehead, nuzzling against her temple, “I would have you always in perfect comfort and contentment.”

“Why?  You don’t even know me.”  

What was wrong with her?  For some reason she found it impossible to not speak her mind to him.  No one spoke their mind to a king, not if they wanted to keep their mind on top of their shoulders, anyway.  Before he could say anything, she pulled away and bowed low.

“I am sorry, Your Majesty- oh fuck that hurts!”  The bow turned into her clutching her stomach.

“Poor little thing,” he said with an amused air.  With a few quick but gentle motions he lifted her and carried her back to the bed, “I tried to be careful, but you are very tiny and have been through a great deal, haven’t you?”

“I’m not-”

“Loki,” he said, laying down beside her, ignoring what she started to say.  “Not ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Sire’ or ‘My king,’ just Loki.  And nothing else, unless you wish to displease me.  You  _ do not  _ wish to displease me. Call me Loki in your thoughts, even.  I want it even in your thoughts...” 

What did that mean?

He lay next to her, a perfect sprawl of limbs, his cock now fully hard and gently nudging her hip.  “Do not be concerned, he shall have to be content until you are feeling whole again.”

He laid his fingertips on her navel and began to softly circle there, over and over with just the barest bit of pressure, a slight silver glow tracing behind his touch.  Things within her began to loosen and ease, and her stomach felt warm.  He lay his head down on the pillow beside her, and she could feel him watching her.  The cool of his breath stirring her hair.

The most dreaded creature on Midgard, perhaps in all of the Jotunn Empire if the stories were true, was soothing her and it was all Nora could do not to burst into tears.

“Now close your eyes.”

“If you want me to go back to sleep you could just order me to do it, couldn’t you?  I mean, everyone has to do what you say, anyway,” she snapped at him, her emotions a tangled mess.  “Eat.  Spread your legs.  Go to sleep.  Call me by my name.  Even in my thoughts.  Bossy….”

The… Loki laughed.  Dry, ratcheting, and loud.  

She had made him laugh.

It made the part of her that wasn’t her body feel a little important, too.

“You are quite brave.  Or foolish.  I find either charming.  Very well then,” he lifted his hand from her stomach and touched her lightly between her eyes with his ring finger, stroking down to the tip of her nose, “I order you, go to sleep, Nora.”

She was asleep before he finished her name.

 

The next morning Loki called for his private council to meet him in the black and gold tiring room nearest to the smaller throne room.  

Because he was meeting with a delegation from Asgard later he had chosen to dress in traditional Jotun garb - gold vambraces and shin guards, black leather loincloth, and a very basic, very well used thrusting sword and with a matching dagger hanging low on his hips.  In addition, he added a delicate chain of jewels to hang between his horns instead of wearing his crown.  It made a very soft ringing sound when he moved, and if he could hear it then the room was quiet enough for him.

Loki prefered to speak into silence.  It made more of an impression.

He seated himself on his favorite chair and directed the servants to remove the other seats.   No need for anyone to get cosy today.

Lady Tye, who looked much like her sister Samiah save for her eyes which had not been enhanced, arrived first, as was unsurprising.  She was the most highly placed Midgardian in the palace as a member of his inner circle and she was ruthless, lethal if need be as at least one rival had discovered, in her efforts to keep her position.  She gave a deep bow, her elegant silk grey dress trailing behind her - she preferred more traditional clothing than her moddish twin.

She looked around for a minute, as if expecting a chair or perhaps a divan to materialise for her.  Neither did.

“You Majesty, accept my felicitations on your marriage.  I apologize for being unable to return in time to witness the ceremony.  I have prepared a list of locations near the new Queen’s home that would be suitable for a tidy little palace for her.  I was thinking we could have Barren design it, as a sign of the respect you officially hold her in.”

“I could do that.  I could.  I won’t, but I could,” came the clipped, annoyed voice of the only other mortal on his privy council, Theunis Barren.  His dark beard was turning grey but he still had a firm step and clear, cynical gaze.  One of his ancestors had been part of the vast King’s Diaspora in the 14th Midgardian century.  His family had ended up in the far south of the same continent that Nora’s family lived on - Olmaca - an area of heavy flooding and dangerous swamps.  

It was through sheer force of will, charm, and an inborn understanding of engineering, that Barren had lead the other displaced persons in the settlement to dig canals, build rudimentary dikes, and create some of the richest farmland on the planet.  Not that he farmed any of it.  

Having decided he was a genius, and that his family would be geniuses as well and would never touch manure again, he set about inventing things.  At first it was mostly garbage.   A plow that could create seven rows at once but needed more horses than currently lived in the region to pull.  A filtration system for seawater that just evaporated any liquid that was placed within it.  A wagon that only ran uphill.  But eventually he made a few useful discoveries.

His daughter Elenn did even better.  And her son, Johannes, and so on.  

Theunis was the apotheosis of his ancestors ambitions, an actual genius with a fortune greater even than most of the Jotunn families on Midgard.  His was as arrogant as he was brilliant. A true visionary.  Charismatic and off-putting in equal measure.  Loki gave him a place on his council less out of respect for the man than out of a desire to keep him as close as possible.

“If I tell you to, you will,” the King smiled unkindly at Barren, who bowed in the most insultingly obsequious manner possible.

“Of course, My King.  For you, anything.  So what style are we thinking?  She’s a peasant, I could make it look like a barn.  So she would be comfortable.  But a really nice one.”

Loki raised an eyebrow at Barren.  His pet genius was in quite the mood today.  “Her Majesty will not require a palace.  She will be living here.  And unless you want me to assign you to go redesign every, single outhouse in Nora’s home province as a wedding gift from our gracious queen to her people you will remember that she is now your superior in each and every way.   Not just in that of character, which was doubtless true even before her recent elevation.”

Barren gave him a shocked look, his weathered skin flushing in annoyance, just managing to choke back the retort that seemed to be desperately trying to worm its way out of his mouth, simply nodding instead.

“What do you mean, staying here, my nephew?”  He looked up to see his aunt Geror, and the rest of the  Jotnar on his council - Lord Kyrhyn, Loki’s his warband leader Hernir, and Baroness Miliki - each arriving at carefully separated intervals.  They had no doubt been listening at the doors and conferring about what he might want.  Jotunns were inveterate gossips and utterly terrible at scheming and politicking.  It was why he kept so many of them in his court.

“As you seem to be having difficulty understanding simple Midgardian Adamic, shall I repeat my words in Jotunn, dear aunt.”  His voice lowering further, grinding out, “ **The Queen will be living in the royal residence,,** ” in his inelegant, inflexible native tongue.

“I believe what her Grace meant,” Tye said, inclining her head lightly towards Geror, whom she loathed, “is that we are all unclear as -”

“If I wanted to explain myself to you I would, Tye,” he cut her off, leaning forward to lean on his knee, looking up at her from under his horns. “Have I  _ ever  _ wanted to?  Tye?”

She blanched beneath her velvety, black skin, “Never, Sire.” 

He leaned back, “As I was saying, the Queen will be living in the palace, and we will have a feast in her honor on the morrow.  I fear overtaxing her too much today.”

Kyrhyn snorted, “She is a speck of a thing, but I saw her pushing hogs around that pit you pulled her out of.  She’s probably stronger than Hernir.”  

The warband leader gave a growl.

“Not this morning.  My little queen is extremely tired.  As am I.”

He then waited for a count of ten, allowing his words and their significance to take root in their minds.

There was silence as they all took in what he was implying.  And then a deeper silence as they all came to the same shocked conclusion.  The King’s strict adherence to taking only Jotunns to his bed, and to treating his bedding of his queens as a quickly to be finished formality,  was so well known as to be treated as a fact.  

The sun was a necessary evil.

Might made right.

The King only enjoyed blue flesh.

“Aunt, I expect you to arrange the feast.  Hernir, you will test the members of my warband to find the strongest save yourself, to serve as the queen’s bodyguard.  Barren, the queen’s chambers will need to be remade for her comfort.  See to it.”

“Sure, makes perfect sense.  Last week I invented a jet that can carry the same armor weight as a tank, this week I’m hanging curtains.  Makes perfect sense.  Or did I say that already?  Still true.”

“Make them very nice curtains, Barren.  I want the rooms to be resplendent for my new consort.  When the pictures are released of those chambers, of her new wardrobe, and jewels no one will think for a second about her agrestic antecedents.  Rather, they shall-”

“No.”  Lady Tye interrupted him.  

It was not unprecedented, but it was usually unwise.  Very unlike the fiercely political animal he knew her to be.

“Tye-”  Loki looked at her as she tapped a pen on her mouth and then stopped to scribble a few notes on a page.  He recognised that look.  She was about to be very clever.

“The Peasant Queen!”

“What?”  He asked, with a slight smile. 

How sweet.  She thought she had gotten to the idea before he had.

“Hey, I got into trouble for saying that!”  Barron objected.

Tye walked in a circle as she spoke, her hands spreading before her as she spun her vision.

“We need to turn that around, not ignore it!  Not hide it!  She’s the Peasant Queen.  One of them.  Not just one of  _ them _ , one of the humblest of them.  Which is why she is staying here.  Having spent time with her, our wise king as realised that for far too long have needs the most numerous of his cherished subjects been unheard in the halls of power!  But now they will have a voice in their new queen.  His Majesty has heard a homey, humble common sense in her simple thoughts-”

Loki raised a hand, cutting her off with a laugh.  He may not know Nora very well yet, but homey and humble… no.   

“You were doing very well till that last part.  But yes, very good.  Excellent even.  I should have thought of it.  In fact, let us say that I did,” he said, assuaging her vanity and taking all of the credit at the same time.

Tye bowed, “I salute your wisdom, Sire.  May I have your leave to go?  I have some thoughts on her majesty’s wardrobe that may take some time.  And I have a few members of the press I wish to leak some information to.”  In the throes of an idea, she was unstoppable.

He waved her away, “In a moment, we are nearly done here.  Kyrhyn, go give her family… something… money, land, both?  Yes, both.  Give them the local baroncey.”

“What should I do with the current baron?”

Loki raised an eyebrow at him, “Do I really have to think of everything myself?  Just don’t kill him.  It would look bad.  Put him in charge of something far away and make it appear to be a promotion.  And be very clear to Nora’s family that this is a one time gift.  That none of them are to show up here looking for and bothering her.  She will be far too busy for them.”

“How would they even get here?”  Geror asked.  The palace was inaccessible, save by air - and Loki’s personal, secret paths.  

“You would be amazed at what people can accomplish when they have their hand out.” He rose, and everyone took a knee.  Sadly, even kneeling Hernir was as tall as Loki was standing,  Kyrhyn and Geror nearly so.

He told himself he no longer cared.

“Hernir, you will accompany me to the meeting with the Asgardians,” he said, walking past his counselors.  The enormous Frost Giant stood quickly to follow his King.  Loki turned back to him with a smile, “Stand as insultingly close to their prince as you can without actually starting a new war, yes?”

As he left the room, Ceorl, who none of them had noticed waiting by the door, placed a midnight green cloak lined in white bear fur over Loki’s shoulders, and then arranged his inky black hair over back over it, so the locks hung just so.  

As the king liked everything, to be just so.

  
  
  



	6. You May Think You Know Everything.  You Are Wrong.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a hint of plot.

 

The meeting with the Asgardians took most of the remainder of the king’s day.  Loki loved to speak, and the Aesir enjoyed pontificating.  Also there was a  _ bit _ of personal history between himself and their beefy golden prince, who mostly glowered at him and Hernir, nodding once or twice when one of his people managed to make a salient point in the midst of their bloviation. 

Eventually they had accomplished nothing but wasting time in a highly diplomatic way, thus satisfying everyone and no one in equal measure, which was, after all, diplomacy’s purpose.  

The real work would be done the next night at the feast and afterwards during the revels, in the privacy of a public place, as with most real politics.

When Loki finally returned to his chambers to bathe and then spend some time at his desk, he was dumbfounded by the sight of his wife.  Which was becoming a distressing regularity.  He would have to find a way to become adjusted to her and quickly or he would get nothing done.

But she was-

She was curled on one of the divans, bare feet tucked partially under a pillow, a plate of fruit balanced on the side of her thigh, reading, a look of calm concentration on her clever face.

Her dark hair was dressed in a simpler, more comfortable style than the wedding braids, with just one long plait having been wound around the top her head where a coronet might sit.  It had been only lightly beaded, so when she moved her head a dark glimmer of amber or onyx caught the light.

Someone, Ceorl most like, or possibly Samiah as she was vastly useful and had an admirable attention to detail, had found her some clothing.  It must not have been easy, as small as she was compared to even the other mortals who served his pleasure  in the Keep.  It was seafoam colored silk, with a surprisingly high neck and waist lines, and billows of soft petticoats that went to her ankles.  It showed off nothing of her body but her arms…

It was a rather strange style for a grown woman, and then Loki reasoned it probably had formerly belonged to a young daughter of one of his courtiers.  

Nora’s wardrobe needed to sorted out immediately.   That little girl’s dress was too perverse for even his enjoyment, and it suited Nora’s stubborn jaw and straightforward, daring eyes not at all.

Loki was then chagrined to realize that she had not noticed his arrival, so engrossed was she in her… reading.  He was used to everyone being near to hysterically aware of his presence at all times, terrified that they might accidentally cause offense if they did not know where he was at all times. 

She was actually reading a book of Jotunn history, not simply looking at the pictures.

She lifted a berry and ate it, all of the while not taking her eyes from the page.

She did not move her lips as she read, even.

She turned the page, then frowned, went back and reread a line, and then turned it again.

She ate another berry.

He was confounded.

How did a farmer’s daughter learn to read Jotunn?  He had  every reason to believe she would not even read Midgardian with any proficiency.  

Then, as if suddenly feeling the weight of his regard, Nora noticed him.  She lifted her head slowly, her eyes large, meeting his.  She jumped up, still holding the huge book, fruit flying everywhere as she went into a low bow.

“Apologies, Your Majest- Loki!  I mean Loki.   Your name is Loki,” she said, shaking a finger at him and nodding.  “Sorry, Loki,” she said, looking at the mess of berries.  

“How do you know to read Jotunn?  And stop bowing to me.  In public a little curtsy will do, in private, neither.  Do you know what a curtsy is?”

Most Midgardians could speak enough Jotunn to say ‘yes’, ‘no,’ apologize abjectly, find a bathroom, and recite the Prayer of Loyalty, and most could also recognise a few written words as well, mostly welcoming them to keep out, beware, and other useful things.  But very few could actually read the brutal calligraphy of his homeworld.

“Oh, um, I was a Hyrrokkin Scholar.  But I only made it through one year.”  The way she spoke, it was clear that she assumed he must know that.  

It was rare that Loki felt foolish, and even rarer for him to feel ignorant, but those two revolting emotions battled for supremacy within him at that moment.  He had been told his new bride was a peasant from Olmaca and it had never occurred to him to perhaps find out more about her, so certain was he that she would be wedded, crowned, bedded, and away before a day had passed.  

Of the many things that had never occurred to him to find out was if she had any sort of education.  

Actually, he had not crowned her yet, so eager he had been to get onto the bedding.  Loki wondered if her hairstyle was a subtle reminder from his excellent valet that he might want to find time to do that little ceremony.  

“I see.”

The Hyrrokkin scholarships were one of the only elements of the previous Jotunn rule of Midgard that Loki had kept upon taking over the planet.  Jarl Hyrrokin had been his father’s youngest cousin, married to General Driti who had been the last and most brutal in the line of failed military leaders sent to try and bring Midgard to heel.  While no more sensitive or mortal loving than the typical Frost Giant, Hyrrokin hated her husband more than she was capable of hating any other creature, and had spent much of her time on the former Terra doing good works just to spite him.

The Midgardians were still under the illusion that the woman who called them “lice with hair” was some manner of icy saint and held her memory in the highest regard.  One of the most unusual - as the Jotnar did not have a great love of scholarship - things she had done was to establish the Hyrrokin Scholars, where the children of the peasantry were tested at the age of seven.  Those that scored high enough were given a chance to be educated with the children of the small number (even smaller in those days) of human elites.  

Because it was unheard of for a peasant child to have had any education at all - outside of what little they learned by doing in the farms and factories - virtually none of them were awarded that prize.  When Loki had instigated free, optional, part-time education for children from five to twelve, those numbers had gone up slightly.

“I’m not that smart,” Nora said, with a bit of a wave, dismissing her rather startling accomplishment, “I’ve just always been a good reader.  And I have a good memory.”

Loki felt himself smile at  her as he leaned back on his desk with crossed arms.  He knew what that test was like, it took a good deal more than avid reading and a keen memory to win that particular award, particularly after he had personally rewritten it.  “And your gift?”

When he had started the school system he had known little of the Midgardians and had simply assumed that most of them would send their children (if they sent them at all) just enough to allow them some basic mathematics and a few words, and would keep them close to home, as would be typical for cattle.

While that was generally true- as most of the families could not afford to do without their children’s labour- there were still a surprisingly large number of them that went for the full seven years they were allotted.  

So as to not be overrun by educated, ambitious mortals, Loki had added to the requirements for the Hyrrokin Scholars that they have another talent, an artistic gift of some kind.  Since few peasants had time to explore something they saw as frivolous it had kept the numbers in line.

Nora did not answer him.  Instead, she frowned and then looked up bobbing her head a bit in a rhythm for a few moments.  He was about to ask if she was well - some of those berries had looked less than fresh - and then she opened her mouth -

 

I sow'd the Seeds of Love

And I sow'd them in the spring,

I gather'd them up in the morning so soon,

While the small birds so sweetly sing.

While the small birds so sweetly sing.

 

My garden was planted well

with flowers ev'rywhere

But I had not the liberty

to choose for myself

of the flow'rs that I love so dear,

Of the flow'rs that I love so dear.

  
  


Oh.

That was her gift.

She trailed off, looking at him with a frown of concern.

 

“Sorry, I haven’t had much chance to do that lately either.  ‘Cept to the pigs, but they’re not fussy.  And no, I don’t know what a curtsy is.  Is that that up and down thing?”  She asked, doing what she knew was a bad imitation of the graceful lowering and rising motion that she had seen Samiah and some of the other females do at the wedding.

He kept looking at her.  He looked… Angry?  No, displeased.

Shit.  Had she sounded that bad?  No matter what it was he was making her nervous.

Actually, from the time she had first seen him the day before he had made her alternately nervous, worried, annoyed enough to get herself in trouble, and … 

That other thing.

“I won’t sing again.  Or was it the song?  I know others,” she was babbling.

Pushing off from where he perched on his desk, he took to of those very long legged strides and was very close to her, still frowning, “The song was fine.  Are you in pain?”

“Did I sound that bad!?”  Nora took a step back, offended.

“Not at all.  Your voice is… an unexpected bounty.  I simply wanted to know if you are recovered enough for me to bed you again.  Now.  We still have another night before the magic in the tea you drank wears off and I become a danger to you.”

Ah.

So she wouldn’t be leaving just yet.

“Um, I’m fine.”

A long fingered, fine-boned hand slid up her throat, holding her still as Loki looked at her, his brilliant, fiery eyes slitted, his frown turning into a snake smile, “So, in other words, you are still sore, still aching, but you nevertheless wish me to pleasure you?”

His touch was cool and firm.

“Yes?”  

“Is that a question?” He leaned down to purr into her ear, his thumb stroking along her pulse, “Do you wish me to answer it for you?”

“No?” She couldn’t help it.  As mad as it was, even as his voice rumbled straight from her ear to between her legs, even as the velvety fur of the long cloak that covered him rubbed against her dress, even as she felt the tickle of his hair on her cheek, the brush of his horns against  _ her _ hair, she found it impossible to not tease him.

Maybe because she sensed no one else probably ever had, and she wanted to give Loki a reason to remember her when she was gone.  

The Mad Queen Who Talked Back.

He let her go and stood up, “I am going to bed, you may join me for sleep or for pleasure, I will let you choose.  But after tonight, any time you wish to sleep here rather than in your own chambers plan on getting little rest.”

Nora thought about that for a second or two and then chased him into the bedroom.  Chamber.  Whatever.  He had already removed that long cloak and was barely wearing the already skimpy traditional Jotunn garb.  The long line of his leg, the ridge of his hip, where the black leather loincloth didn’t cover him, made her make a very undignified sound.  And she had little enough dignity to spare.

“It’s… oh, you’re so beautiful...  What did you mean after tonight?  How long am I going to be here?”  She could tell her voice had gone faint and she just stared at him.

He made a beckoning motion with his hand and when she was close to him he reached down, taking her around the waist and lifting so they were eye to eye, so she had to lay her arms over his shoulders, “How long would you like to stay?”  He asked, and then, when she opened her mouth, pressed his against it, sliding his tongue into her mouth, teasing her until she was gripping his hair, then more, his teeth nipping her lips, then covering the spots with smaller kisses, and then thrusting again, now aggressively tasting her.  

Her hands wrapped around the base of his horns and he moaned into her mouth.

When he let her breathe, she spoke without thinking, “Forever.”

“How fortuitous, that was what I had in mind as well.”

“Why?”

“Later.”

“Can you leave on your… all of that?”

Loki laughed, nuzzling her ear, “For being so inexperienced you are already quite wanton.”

Nora stopped moving, “Is that… “

Before she could finish her thought he sat down with her on his lap, looking her in the eye and smiling, “I am, myself, utterly shameless.  We are well matched, but it means I will have to be careful to guard against a slackness in my efficiency elsewhere.  

“Now watch.”  He held up a languid hand, and as Nora looked his onyx nails grew to long, delicately curved claws.  Then, before she could react, he shredded the silly little-girl dress that his quiet servant had given her early.

For the what seemed like the hundredth time in two days, she gulped, a little afraid but mostly the opposite. 

He raised an eyebrow at the undergarments she didn’t have on.  Nora shrugged, “The stuff your man gave me... Uh, uh.  No frilly panties for me.”

“I quite prefer you like this,” he said, softly placing the tip of a claw against her throat, tapping lightly, as if considering.  Then, with a small, rueful shake of his head, “I should not be doing this…  I promise it will not hurt.  For long.”

He scratched a fine, barely bleeding line along the curve of her clavicle to her right shoulder, around the back and up her neck into her hairline.   As with when he had helped her with the pain the night before, a slight, silver shimmer followed his touch.

And as the silver chased his claw, so pleasure chased pain.  Just behind every inch of the wound as it formed came a feeling like when he stroked between her legs.

“What?”  She mumbled, her head sagging so her forehead pressed to his.

“Shhh… stay perfectly still,” he lay her down and leaned over her, now tracing lines down her side, up her stomach.  On her arms, her legs, the tops of her feet, the backs of her hands.  And all the while that pleasure that should have been located one place was now everywhere on her body.

Nora tried to stay as still as possible.   But in addition to whatever magic he was working, there was the occasional brush of warm leather or icy gold from his garments that she found maddening, and he was forced to stop now and then when she couldn’t control the shudders working their way up her her body.  

Sweat poured off of her, leaving small trails of blood, and while he waited for her to still he carefully lapped her clean, watching her expressions, a smug smile showing just a hint of fangs that Nora was certain he hadn’t had before.

All of which only made the shuddering turn to trembling.

It took several hours before he finished.  Kneeling next her, sitting on his heels, Loki nodded, “Yes, they are perfect.”  

Nora snorted weakly, “Would they dare to not be?”  She had been so close to peaking over and over again that she was exhausted from it not happening.

With another raise of his eyebrow Loki rolled her over and then smacked her behind once, very hard, “If you  wish me to work on the second half without aid of my seidr to make it pleasant for you, then please, continue to be sardonic.”

Nora grumbled, but with nothing as subtle as sarcasm so he wouldn’t carry out his threat.

It took another few hours for him to finally finish.  Nora’s fingers were cramped from holding tightly to the sheets to keep her arms from shaking.

Loki lay over her, holding himself up so he didn’t crush her, his cock gently stroking between her legs.  “You must  _ never _ tell anyone about this.”

“But don’t I, or won’t I have maids?  Won’t they see?” she asked, raising herself to rub against him in kind, trying to angle herself so maybe he would just slide in by accident and give her something to hold onto instead of this weird, illusive excitement that ran along all of the marks on her body and did nothing to satisfy it.  

“No.  Your skin will be unmarked by morning.”

Nora buried her face in the furs, her heart feeling heavy with disappointment.  She thought he was going to make her pretty.  Or at least as pretty as she could be.

As if sensing her feelings, Loki said something in a language that she didn’t recognise and all of the grazes fired with ecstasy at once as he gently slipped into her, inch by inch, clearly still cautious about hurting her.

Even though her body was overwhelmed she noticed the affection of the act, “I’m ok.  Thank you,” she gasped out as he slowly worked his way in an out of her, one of his hands having worked it’s way beneath her to stroke.  

Nora heard a high, keening noise come from her and she began to hump like a mindless thing against his touch.  But it felt like he was still touching her everywhere.  He murmured with a laugh, “You are polite at the strangest times.  Come for me now, my little treasure.  Take me with you, and then you can rest.”

As if she had been waiting, Nora felt every brush of bliss on her body contract to one perfect point where they were joined and she felt surge after surge of her peak, matched by her husband.

 

After leaving his queen soundly asleep, Loki changed into the newest robe he had designed.  The dragon that coiled about it in elaborate embroidery was satisfactorily splendid.  And a good likeness to his frenemy  Xunsu, who would not be flattered to know of it.

Ceorl waited in the outer chamber, laying a meal out on the table near the windows.  He always knew when Loki would be hungry.  “Tell Lady Samiah that her majesty will sit with me at the feast tomorrow night, and to hurry the arrangements for her wardrobe.  Did they fit her today?”

“Yes, master.  I also took the liberty of explaining to her how the bathing chamber works.  She found the ‘pond’ most amusing.”

Ceorl had absolutely no expression his face or in his voice, as usual.  But there was something in his lightless grey eyes.

“You like her, don’t you?”  Loki asked, popping a piece of cheese in his mouth, trying not to moan.  The Midgardians were short-lived and contrary, but by the gods they knew how to eat.

“I do, master.  I apologize for the liberty of it.”

“Not at all.  I think she will need all of the friends she can get in my court.  It will be… difficult for me to protect her from the politics and all the rest of it.  Let me know, as she finds her way, who we can truly trust with her and who we cannot.

“Also, tell Samiah I will see to Nora’s raiment for tomorrow, but she will responsible for teaching her how to behave in company.  The Asgardian delegation will be there, and I would like my queen to make a favorable impression on my golden ‘brother’, even if he will most likely fail to do likewise.  Now, bring me a whiskey and the paperwork on the new army recruitment plans.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Nora sings is from the 16th century. I am not a poet or a songwriter, so I am probably going to have some anachronisms in this area since I can't not include some music.


	7. Suppertime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora and Loki have dinner.

 

It was not uncommon for Jotunns to keep envoys or delegations from supplicant nations waiting, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, as a sign of the contempt they held them in.  There was a legendary (but possibly true) story about Emperor Laufey leaving a very young, mortal diplomat from Nova Prime in one of the Imperial waiting rooms for so long that the man’s rather aged grandchild, who lived his whole life in that room, had been the one who ended up finally meeting with him.

Loki had never resorted to such tactics. 

Not because he held diplomatic missions in especially high regard, although unlike most of his species he recognised that they were a periodically useful type of necessary evil.  Instead he chose to be exceptionally punctual, giving the incorrect impression to whoever he was meeting with that he was less confident than most other Jotunn nobles.  Or that they might be of some interest to him.

Neither thing was true, but both beliefs were useful to him.

In the current case, however, the delegates from Asgard knew him of old.  Knew that he held them in special, no, peculiar, regard and that he was far from unconfident.

So the feast in their honor was exactly one hundred and twenty seven minutes late starting.

One hundred minutes for the century that Prince Thor had spent as Emperor Laufey’s guest on Jotunheim to ensure the peace, and twenty-seven for the years that Loki had spent on Asgard to ensure he knew his place.  

The King might be elegant and dignified, but a little pettiness was good for the digestion.

Finally, the gemshorns and sackbutts rang out and His Majesty arrived, new consort on his arm.  

 

Nora concentrated on not making an idiot of herself as they entered the grand feasting hall on the top-most level of the fortress.  

There were so many ways she could look foolish, though.

She was glad that the gown that had been provided for her was only ankle length so she didn’t have to worry about tripping over the black silk skirts or the endlessly long pine-green scarf that was twisted around her bare shoulders and breasts and then trailed behind her like a train. And that her hair was in a simple coil around the back of her head so nothing pulled or itched.

She was very glad that Loki had told her that they would be expected to walk at a slow pace so everyone could get a good look at them.  And that in return she should look at no one.  Not even him.  

And she was most extra-specially glad (and relieved) that Ceorl had recommended to Lady Samiah that perhaps she should show the queen the feasting hall before hand so she would know what to expect.

Which was the only reason Nora wasn’t gawking like a hayseed.

The sweep of the hall that could seat several hundreds of guests in comfort at the long, marble tables was gawk-worthy enough, but it was  _ the ceiling _ , or rather the lack of a ceiling, that had caused her to stand with her head back and her mouth hanging open for an embarrassingly long time.  

Above the great space was a vast dome of nothingness - or energy, as Samiah had explained - that held back a heavy, soft snow that gently slid off of it, revealing an infinite sky.

Even so, it took all of Nora’s will to not embarrass the ki- … Loki to keep her from looking up again now that it was night.  The walls of the mountain meant she had no idea what the weather was outside.  Would she see another great storm as there had been the night of her wedding, or would it be a sea of blackness and stars?

At the far - oh, so very far - end of the hall the great table waited, gleaming black marble adorned with silver and teak, bedecked with rare, delicate flowers, covered in frost and frozen in their perfection by the breathes of the king’s Jotunn servants.  Nora recognized Lord Kyrhyn and Lady Geror, and from his pictures in the quarterlies and on the public screens, Theunis Barren, the great human engineer who had been in her chambers when she had returned there to dress.

_ Several hours earlier…. _

“Your um… Majesty?  I guess you are the queen,”  Barren had asked with a raised eyebrow, “I seem to not recall the crowning, but the king was in such a hurry to get you out of the public eye.  Now I have been tasked with making over your rooms in a style that would make you comfortable….  I’m thinking hay?  A few goats, perhaps?”  He wasn’t very tall, but even he had to look down at Nora, “And maybe some doll furniture?”

He had looked at her with a smirk, his eyes running up and down the tunic of Loki’s that she was wearing.  He was handsome and famous and Nora decided she didn’t like him at all.

But unlike the Jotunns and the resplendent Sudanese who adorned the palace, she also wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by him.

“What, haven’t you ever seen someone wearing a pelt from their kill before?”  She asked.  Samiah’s perfect skin turned almost purple as she attempted to not laugh at Barren.  Nora patted him on the arm, hard.  “And I kept the pigs, the goats were my brother’s business.  You know what pigs are, don’t you?  Well, if you aren’t sure I bet there’s a mirror around here somewhere.”

And then she stepped around him, trying to imitate the King’s swagger, while worrying that she didn’t have enough shoulder to carry it off.

From behind her she had heard, “Theunis, your face!”  

“I think I am starting to see what  _ he _ likes so much...” Barren said softly.

Samiah had caught up with her, giving silent commands to the attendants, all of whom were merely human.  “His Majesty wishes you to know that if you want any of your servants to be Jotnar you need only ask, but he felt you would be more comfortable and warmer this way.”

Nora made herself put up with being undressed and led to one of those indoor ponds that the king had, even though having some many people fussing with her made her skin crawl.  “Um, do I have to have so many?  What do they all do?”

Samiah smiled, the glorious scars beside her mouth framing it.  Nora sighed and looked at her bare skin.  There was no evidence of of the marks the king had made.  Even though he had told her as much she had hoped anyway.

“They are a sign of your importance, Majesty.”

Before Nora could say anything else she started to shiver violently as the last of the magic in the tea she had drunk left her system.

Now, hours later and turned out like a queen - without the crown - Nora was trying very hard to not shiver and gawk.

At the king.

He was so… perfect.   The graceful undulation of his horns - now brushed with just the tiniest bit of silver to make them glow in the candlelight - the wave of his inky hair, now entirely unbraided and reaching his waist, his perfect posture while still looking relaxed, the tiny smile of amusement showing a faint gleam of white against his indigo lips.

What the  _ Hel  _ was  _ she _ doing with  _ him _ ?

It did not help that even though he wore a pair of beautifully fitted black gloves, she could feel a slight chill seeping from him through the leather and into her hand.  When they finally reached the high table and had taken their seats, followed by everyone else, he leaned over her, the cold of his body reaching out like fine, delicate tendrils to stroke the side of her face, her bare shoulder, her throat.  

“You are all but vibrating, my queen.  Why did no one supply you with a cloak at the least?”  His voice was soft enough but his breath was like a knife laid flat on her skin.  “Once the magic within the tea fades the taker is often even more sensitive to the cold than is normal for some time.”

Nora’s voice was slightly hoarse, “I told them I didn’t want one.  They offered,” she added, worrying that she might be getting someone in trouble.

“Why would that be?”  The king sounded only vaguely interested in his own question, but his fingers tightened.

Before she could answer they arrived at the head table, where various court dignitaries and the visitors from Asgard waited.  Nora was very unhappy to see she was going to be seated next to the beefy prince from that Realm. 

It occurred to her that it might be an insult to him not to be seated next to the king, but he gave her a very polite bow.  He was quite huge.  Not Jotunn huge, but by human standards.  Actually, looking at him his arms and shoulders were quite Jotunn-like.  He was even larger than his majesty, but much, much uglier.

Loki said a few words and then gestured for everyone to sit.

The metal seat was so cold Nora found herself perched on the edge of it, trying to make as little contact as possible, while also trying to figure out how to use some of the place settings, which looked somewhat like ones she knew but not exactly.

The wine at least she understood.

“May I?” The Asgardian prince asked, seeing if he could pour her more of the very strong wine.

The King was deep in conversation with another of the Asgardian envoys, an attractive if too pale woman with dark hair, and one of the Jotunn members of his council.

“Sure.”

He poured more for her and himself.

“Thank you, your highness,” she said, holding up her glass to him.  Apparently that meant the same thing on Asgard, as he softly touched his glass to hers.

“Please, majesty, call me Thor.”

“Ok.  Why?”  

He choked into his drink, “Um, because it is my name?”

“That’s a good reason.  Call me Nora.”

It then occurred to her that not only did she have no idea what to talk to him about, but that she was probably supposed to be witty and charming and impress him with her queenliness, which was never going to happen.  

Assuming males were the same everywhere, she asked him, “I saw the screen footage of your arrival.  You had a very, um, large axe with you…?  Where did you get something so… sharp?”

“Ah, Jarnbjorn! The Wrecker of Worlds!  It is dwarven made, and I obtained it-”

She knew he keep himself occupied for a while and all she would need to do was nod now and then, say “Really?” and “No!” and make soft gasping noises of either shock or laughter from time to time.

A human servant placed a huge quantity of meat on both of their plates.  Nora wasn’t actually sure she had ever seen that much meat after it had been cooked before.  Freshly slaughtered and steaming with hot blood, but not as food.  Usually a little bacon to flavor some greens, or a bit of head-cheese was about all that made it to her family’s table.

She nibbled and drank.

“Does the food not please you?” Thor asked. “Your husband is a notorious gourmand.”

Nora wondered at the use of ‘notorious’ in place of famous.  “I’m just not that- I really would just like some bread.”

“Allow me.”  He took a platter of something white and offered it to her.  Looking closely, she realized it  _ was  _ bread.  

“Huh.”  By that point Nora was hungry and a little drunk, so it tasted good, or at least like food.  She chewed very carefully, noticing that between the wine and the cold she was shaking rather a lot.

Thor then asked her about how she liked life in the palace, and she was a little afraid that she was, indeed a little drunk.

“Well, it’s very big, the palace.  Very, _ very _ big.  I haven’t actually seen anything but… um, here,” she motioned to the room rather more broadly than she had intended.

Everyone fell silent.

Nora froze.

“What?”

A dark, amused voice licked icily into her ear, “They think you wish to address them, my queen.”  

She turned to Loki in a panic.  He was lounging back in his seat, a glass dangling from his long fingers, a half-smile on his face.  “It is not unheard of for a new queen to offer a toast to her king on such an occasion, even if this isn’t technically our wedding feast.”

She could see by the twinkle in his deep beautiful eyes that he could tell she was a bit worse for the wine.  

Nora also found herself just wanting to look into their red depths.  

No, not just red, scarlet.  Ruby.  Cinnabar.  Madder.  Blood.  

Some of her education was drunkenly coming back to her.

Vermillion.  

His eyes were scarlet.

“Nora?”  He smiled with a bit of a laugh.  Apparently for Loki everything was just a touch funny until it wasn’t.

She stood up, offering Loki and then Thor each a bit of a bow, not sure if that was what the etiquette called for but wanting to waste a little time.  Then she wondered if bending over and standing back up quickly was such a good idea right then.

Then she waited for a server to refill her glass.

Now her hands were shaking very hard.  

Most of the members of the court looked amused or scornful.  Only Lady Geror, Samiah, and - bizarrely - Theunis Barren, looked at her encouragingly.   But it didn’t matter.  Her mind was terrifyingly blank.  And suddenly Nora was afraid she would never be able to think of anything ever again.  Which meant she  _ was  _ thinking, didn’t it?

There may have been a bit of not so subtly controlled laughter from parts of the feast hall.

Nora cleared her throat, terrified of embarrassing Loki.  But before she could make a noise the king rose, his hand on the small of her back, “Greetings to our guests - Jotunn, Midgardian, and Asgardian alike,” he said with a light tone.  “For those of you who have not had the distinct honor yet, I present my new queen, Nora of Shi-ka-akwa.  Who I know you will both esteem and offer the same deeply humble obeisance that you offer to her doting king.” 

He gestured to her with an elegant bow of his head, his eyes flashing like fire at the assembly.

They fell over themselves standing to up to then kneel back down to her.  Other than the Asgardians who all placed a hand to their chests and bowed instead.

Nora gulped and Loki whispered in her ear, “I have something for you.  Apologies for the delay, but I felt that the existing crown did not suit you.  Also, I will admit to enjoying having an audience for my beneficence.”

The consort’s crown, reproductions of which were common in little girl’s Samhain costumes throughout Midgard, was a lovely thing of twisted bands of silver, with emeralds and sapphires to honour the colours of Terra.  Nora felt a bit of a twinge at the thought of not wearing it.  Her family had never had the money for store bought costumes and she had always wanted one.

A Jotunn servant had seemingly materialized at the king’s elbow, holding a large wooden box, carved with magical runes and smelling faintly of incense.  With a neat flip of his hand the King opened it and pulled out a   -

A pair of magnificent, golden horns, spiralling lazily, clearly modeled on the King’s own but sized for Nora’s tiny form.  They were fitted on a band that would hide in her hair.

There was a rising murmuration from the court as Loki gently laid it on her head and then a louder one when he softly brushed one of the golden tines with one of his silvered ones.  

Clearly something scandalous was going on.  

Nora didn’t care.  She didn’t have a word for how she felt, in fact she was pretty sure that no word existed for it.  Maybe on  _ Alfheim _ .  Apparently the White Elves had a word for everything that was wonderful and beautiful, just as their Dark counterparts had one for everything degraded and vile.

She turned away from his delighted gaze.  Plainly delighted by how she looked, and clearly even more delighted by the outrage.  She stood taller, not just because of the extra height the horns gave her, and cleared her throat.  The king flicked his fingers, silencing the court who knew better than to anger him when he was having a moment.

“I know it’s, um, tradition for the Queen to offer a toast to the King at their first feast and all, but I didn’t know before… anyway, I’m… I have a song.”

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid was long, but their wasn’t a noise to be heard in the hall for all twelve verses.

 

Nora was waiting for him in the retiring room near the feast hall, drinking water and looking grim, a white fur cloak clutched around her.  When he entered she stood up, her head down in shame, “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”  He asked, “For drinking too deeply?  I can assure that is not shameful in either Jotunn or Aesir culture.  Or is it for giving such an… enthusiastic tribute to me?”

She groaned and practically fell back into her seat.

“It was quite charming and sincere, two qualities usually lacking in my court. And your voice was a gift to the jaded palates of my courtiers.  I even saw my guard Hernir wipe a tear when he thought no one was looking.  Rather, I must apologize to you,  _ aaree _ .  I knew you were cold and I meant to send for a cloak for you at the feast but I became to enthralled in my politicking.”

Nora reached up and touched her crown with a gulp, “You don’t  _ ever _ need to worry about me, I was fine,” she said around the water she was sipping.

Loki let that drop, sensing that she had specifically eschewed wearing the cape she had been offered by her maids because the human women in his court did not wear them, all having long since acclimated.  

She had not wanted to embarrass him.

He sat next to her, legs sprawled and gently touched her cheek with his gloved fingers.  “I wore these tonight so I would be able to walk you into the hall without my cold burning you.  I do not expect you to be comfortable here after mere days.  You have been through a great deal, very quickly, with little aid and less warning.  You charmed Prince Thor and astonished my enemies and… what passes for my allies.  What king could ask for more?”

Her head raised slowly, her brown eyes bright and her expression both embarrassed and pleased.  “When can I get another cup of that tea?  Because I want to kiss you.  A lot.”

“And I you.  Everywhere.”  He stroked his fingers into her dark hair, and she reached up slowly, as if waiting for him to tell her to stop.  When he did not she gently ran the tips of her fingers down each of his horns as she had her own, staring at them with an open mouthed smile.  It was all Loki could do to keep from shuddering under her touch.  He had never let a lover be free with them before, the consummate sign of his regality.  He knew that if he let it go on too long he could easily lose himself in her touch and delicate as she was he could harm her without intending to.

Yet how dearly he wanted her now.

No.

He gently took her wrists in his gloved hands and moved them to her lap, “But for now you need to sleep and I need to go and drink with my visitors.  Thor has brought a special bottle of the mead we used to drink when I lived on Asgard, which he is under the illusion I thought delicious.  The things I do for power,” Loki sighed, rising.  

“Wait, when did you live on Asgard?” Nora called out after him, but he chose not to answer, not quite ready to give every secret of his soul to his little queen, but knowing that she would have them from him eventually.

 

Later, hours and several bottles of grotesquely sweet wine later, Loki finally managed to bid good night to Thor and his sodden retinue.  

He walked alone through the silent halls.  His father always had guards with him in the redoubt on Jotunheim, but Loki refused to have them here except when he felt a need to make a point.  He knew that he was too feared for anyone to act against him in his own palace, where his magic was at it’s strongest and where the very walls would fight for him.

At the last moment instead of turning towards his own rooms he went to the queen’s.

Loki sent Nora’s servants away, “Do not return until Lady Samiah sends for you,” he said as they scurried from the room.

The crown of horns he had made for her sat on the table beside the bed, where it had been the last thing Nora had seen before falling asleep.  There was still a part of him that wondered if it had been wise to give her such a thing.  When word reached his father, as it would very quickly if it had not already, his rage would shake the already unstable ground of Jotunheim.

Maybe Laufey would accidently cause that temblor that had been threatening the fault line beneath the capitol for centuries to finally break open and bury the Imperial fortress, all of the rest of the royal family, the holy temple Loki had nearly been sacrificed in to ensure victory in the Great War, and everything else.

A prince could dream.

His little queen was curled on herself in her in the huge bed, covered in several furs and a heavy, black velvet coverlet, but was still slightly shivering.  He had ensured that she would not suffer from the wine when she woke, but the cold from the enchanted tea could not be dispelled.

With a sigh, for it was not something he cared to do often, Loki called upon his curse and shifted his form.

First his blood warming slowly, the heat painful until he reached that point where he was more Asgardian than Jotunn, then his body gave a deep shudder that left him with pallid, slick skin, his horns gone, leaving his head feeling unnaturally friable, his vision weaker in some ways - he could not see so well in the dark, but better in the light.  

He looked at himself in a full-length mirror that hung on the wall.  His features were much the same, and his hair - thank all of the gods - remained glorious.

Quickly stripping, he climbed into the bed and pulled Nora against him, her back pressed to his front, arms about her.  She mumbled in her sleep as her body untensed and softened as he warmed her.  

“Shhh…. Sleep, aaree,  _ sy on wane unelme.” _

Nora gave a sweet sigh, pressing a kiss to the arm beneath her head and fell asleep.  

He left her before dawn, himself again, the guards at her door disciplined enough not to notice.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. I am still finding myself blocked.


	8. Politics Can Make for No Bedfellows at All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is busy, so is Nora. But not together.

The morning after the feast Nora woke, surprised but relieved to be alone.  

She had dreamt vividly for what seemed to be most of the night about someone holding her, whispering words she couldn’t make out, gently rubbing her back and arms, and warming her.

She pulled the blankets over her head and moaned a little, feeling guilty that she had clearly been dreaming about a human man rather than her husband.  Which was even worse since before she had married him the King had been the subject of most of her dreams.  

Also, she was shocked to not be hung over.

Finally, she got out of bed and spent the day letting people direct her from place to place and hand her things she needed.  At some point while she had been at the feast Lady Tye, Samiah’s terrifying and equally beautiful sister, had directed her servants on how they should clothe their new queen and arrange her hair and make-up.  

Now, as Nora ate some fruit and bread for breakfast, she explained it to her as well.  “Your wardrobe is finally completed, majesty, my personal apologies for the delay, but his majesty insisted that we have human craft-persons do the work.”  Tye said, her tone one she might take with a child, gliding around the room, motioning here and therefor the servants to pull out this and that item for her.

“Yes, three whole days to make what looked like a few hundred dresses, and pairs of shoes, and what-nots,” she muttered into her cup of warm, spiced small beer.  (Nora really didn’t know what most of the other things were, hanging on the racks and tucked into the chests that had been hauled by the Jotunns into her room that morning.)   “Clearly those seamstresses and cobblers were just typical, lazy peasants… what can you do about the lower classes, though?”

Lady Tye turned away from the two gowns she was trying to chose between and stared at Nora, clearly shocked.  From across the room, Theunis Barren snorted and then ducked a very pointed look from Tye and went back to directing his assistants in taking measurements for the refurbishment of the Queen’s suite.

“Yes, quite, Majesty,” Tye said with a graceful incline of her lovely head, the elegant scars marking her face flushing slightly purple. “Today you will be photographed for the periodicals, and filmed for the screens.”

Clutching a piece of that weird white bread until it turned to crumbs, Nora felt a pang of terror.  She had been hoping not to have another chance to make a public fool out of herself for a little while yet.  

“I will give you a list of the questions and what answers you need to give.  It should not be too onerous,” Tye added.

Damn, but Nora couldn’t help herself, there was something about her ladyship that made her want to act the fool.

Nora crossed the room to look at the dresses herself.  They weren’t in the highly fashionable, leg-baring style of Samiah and the other most trend conscious courtiers, nor were they traditional, long and flowing silks that were favored by Tye and her conservative clique.  Nora couldn’t help being a little disappointed, even while knowing that at her height, neither style would suit her at all.

Rather, the gowns were not unlike the plain, utilitarian dresses that she wore all of her life, but made of the most expensive and luxuriant fabrics, all clearly tailored to fit her perfectly, and in lovely, soft colours and patterns rather than practical browns and greys.

“By this time of the morning I usually been ankle deep in pig shit for two hours, so, sittin’ and smilin’ like the village drunk and talkin’ for a stretch isn’t gonna make me too a-wearied,” she said as country as she could.  Then she tried to sling her arm around companionably around the other woman’s shoulder, but so great was their height difference that Nora was only able to catch her upper arm in a brief pat.

Barren’s voice was shaking now with his effort not to laugh and he had to resort to pointing silently at things that needed to be done.

Then, tilting her head in imitation of one of Loki’s gestures, Nora nodded her head at the dresses, “I’ll wear the fern colored one that’s on that rack, with those blue boots.”

“I-”

“They’re almost the same colors the King wore at his coronation.  Everyone has that portrait in their house.  He was honoring the colors of the planet, and I’ll be honoring him.”

Tye now just stared straight at her, mouth slightly open.

Nora went back to her breakfast.  

A bit later, Tye offered her a sheet of paper, “These are the questions and answers, majesty.  Obviously you should feel free to put them in your own idiom.”  Then she stopped herself, “Idiom means in your own words.”

Nora rolled her eyes, reading.

Then she read it again, thinking she might have forgotten how words worked as she looked at the answers.

“Did the King come up with these answers?” 

“No, majesty.  We had a group of-”

Nora balled the paper up.  “So they’re suggestions, rather than commands.  Good,” she tossed it into the fire,  “‘cause no one in the history of anywhere has ever said things like that.  Never in any idiom, dialect, vernacular, argot, parlance, jargon, patter, or fucking phraseology.  I’ll extemporize. Extemporize means I'll wing that shit.”

“Excuse me…” Barren said abruptly, quick stepping out of the room like a man needing to pee, exiting outer chamber, the waiting room, and finally in the hallway before bursting into laughter that was not at all muffled by the heavy wooden doors between them. 

 

Loki took a few moments from his busy schedule of alternately listening to and prevaricating at the Asgardian contingent that day to watch the brief interview with his new queen that had been filmed that morning.

Tye had been correct to have set Nora up in one of the smaller ante-chambers in front of a small, cozy hearth rather than in the grand hall or the throne room.  Her slight form was not dwarfed, and she looked very comfortable in the large leather chair.  At one point she was so absorbed in her thoughts at one of the inane questions she tucked her suede booted feet under her.  

He felt a wide smile cross his face as he took in how she was garbed.

“How do you like living in the palace so far, your majesty?”  The unseen interviewer had an elegant African accent and had been chosen because he was shorter than average for his people so Nora wouldn’t have to look up to answer him.

She gave a half-frown.  “I don’t think I am living here yet.  It’s only been a few days and I haven’t really seen anything.  Or know where anything is.  Like the kitchens.  Where are they?  Or the front door for that matter.  I’ve only ever lived one place, well, two if you count school.  I expect to be living here soon, though, once I can get a look around.”

“What are your thoughts on married life?”

Nora raised an eyebrow, “Ask me later when I am maybe going to be unintimidated enough to have any.  The King is… he’s been very… kind,” she blushed a lovely shade of rose, “considering that I am pretty lost all of the time.  I hope he’s as patient as he is old.”  Then she laughed a bit, covering her mouth, “Damn, I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“I would gather these are not the answers she was given?”

“No, majesty,” her ladyship’s voice was cautious.  “She is on her own.”

“Very clever, Tye,” he said, motioning to the screen.  “The colors, and the gown suits her well, as does the frankness.  Nora was not born for guile.  We can use that.”

Tye shook her head, “That was her majesty’s idea, the gown, the answers.  I just set the stage.  She’s very… She isn’t what I expected.”

Nor I, but here she is and I love the uncertainty of her, he thought.  

“We must be careful not to allow her too much head until she has found her feet.  Keep her public interactions judiciously brief for the time being.”  He stood, stretching, “This was a pleasant interlude, but now back to work.”

 

For the next few weeks Nora felt as if she was unmarried again, so little did she see Loki.  Between his regular duties and the Aesir visitors nearly all of his hours were filled.  There were a few minutes here and there, but all of those were public and busy.  

They posed for an image that would be turned into a portrait.  Nora had been dressed in a simple black gown with a white fur cape lined in green, her hair brushed out long, and her crown of horns popped onto her head and then seated on a massive wooden chair while lighting was fussed with.  The photographer begged her not to move.

Finally, she could hear firm steps behind her and the King’s hand gently settled onto her fur-covered shoulder, “Good afternoon, Nora.  Don’t turn, they have you exactly so.  Just remember, when they tell you to smile, do not,” his velvety voice wafted down to her.

“Why?”  She asked, wanting very much to look up at him.  

“Why make the strangers who will look upon us feel comfortable?  Let them worry.”

(Which is why in addition to the official portrait of the royal couple, there was an unofficial one that the king had made for himself in which he is smiling down at his tiny queen who was laughing hard enough to snort).

After the image was finally obtained, he was gone again.

At another point there was a small fete held in one of the lesser feast halls, an informal mead-hall gathering where everyone walked about, talking and eating from the endless trays for food that were proffered by dozens of servants.  Loki was mostly engaged with new visitors from Jotunheim in addition to the Asgardians, and other than a few words used to ask her to talk to Thor so he could get some actual business done, they didn’t speak that night either.

Instead, Nora spent most of it with the Aesir prince, his guard Lady Sif, Barren - who was close to finally finishing her rooms- a Jotunn names Atrik who had just arrived at court, and Samiah, trying to figure out anything they all had in common.

Strangely, it turned out it was polo, a type of which seemed to exist on every planet.  Nora’s version involved velocipedes, and the Jotunns some kind of scaly monster called a Kegra, rather than horses, but the game was very much the same otherwise.

At some point she had said something that made everyone else laugh and she caught the king glancing idly over to them.  When he met her eye he winked and then turned back to his own conversation.  For a second she doubted she had even seen it.  So quick it had been.  

So… intimate and private a thing.

Nora wondered if it was normal to feel so… alert from such a small moment.

And if it was also normal to feel so lonely for someone she barely knew.

 

On one night towards the end of the visitors from Asgard’s time on earth the decision was made, against Loki’s better wisdom, that they would visit the city of Grissbu, one of the few important cities on the continent of Olmaca.  

The Aesir wanted to see a place with more humans than Jotnar.  

They also wanted to get drunk and dance without the dull censorious gaze of the Jotunns, who disapproved of the second activity.

Loki had to admit that it sounded rather enjoyable.  He himself had picked up a taste for dancing when he was a princeling travelling the Empire and avoiding his father, so he finally agreed to go with them, requesting his aunt Geror arrange for them to have the best club in the city at their disposal and to ensure security would be excellent.

Which was why, many hours later, sitting on a balcony above the dance-floor watching Thor try to learn a piece of esoteric footwork from an especially gorgeous Dinka nobleman and enjoying a glass of whisky, he was deeply amused and utterly furious to see his wife standing on the edge of the floor, swaying rather gracefully to the music.

When she had learned of the little field trip Nora had been eager to go with them.  She had never been to the city, and was frankly sick of the palace.  She had ‘joined’ him at his morning council meeting, and he had been displeased with her for it, so the conversation, their first in some time, had not gone well.  

Nora had clearly been unhappy that they had not had more time together, which was gratifying, but her idea that going with him would constitute some manner of ‘date’ had been beyond horrifying.  

Which she had found offending.  Causing her to have an outburst in front of his amused council.

Which may have caused him to refer to her youthfulness in a slighting fashion.

All of which had ended with him forbidding her from joining their little outing and left Loki feeling rather childish himself.  

“Hernir,” he motioned to his enormous bodyguard.

“Master?”

“Who was in placed in charge of my queen’s guard?”

“Tigan.”

“Unless he is already dead, have him sent to guard the diamond shipments in Africa when we return to the palace.  Maybe the heat will help ensure he does not forget to be more diligent in the future” he ordered.  “And then find a more talented and dedicated replacement.”

“At once.”

“Theunis?”  He called for his engineer who was flirting with a pink-skinned Xandarian waitress.  A recent fashion had started amongst the Midgardians for alien servers and sex workers, so large numbers of them were flooding the cities to make their fortunes before he got around to strengthening the entrance requirements for the planet.

Even he had not foreseen that there would be other species that might actually enjoy human company.  And definitely enjoyed their money.

“Yes, majesty?”

“My wife appears to have invited herself to the party.  Even though I expressly sent word to her guards, and servants, that she was not to come to tonight.  Even after I had… unpleasant words with her this morning.  Go fetch her for me.”

Theunis leaned over the railing and spotted Nora.  “Son of a Bitch.  On it, boss.”

With a familiar motion of his hand, the king sent everyone else away, and they scurried to find entertainment elsewhere.  With another bit of seidr he lowered the sound of the music in his space.

Loki made an effort to compose himself.  He poured another drink and seated himself, tossing his braid over his shoulder, and slouching a bit, with his leather sheathed legs as wide was the large chair would allow.  When it occurred to him that he was looking more seductive than stern he suddenly knew that this was the actual reason he had not wanted Nora to come on this little trip.

He had been keeping himself from her.  

The night he had used his curse to turn into a form safer to her, so that he might hold and comfort her in her sleep, he had shown a weakness with her that he had never felt with any other creature.  It had disturbed him more deeply than he wanted to think about and had forced him to withdraw in order to regroup.

A few moments later Barren returned, Nora followed him.  She was dressed in a simple, deep red gown, her hair worn in a modish, human fashion rather than Jotunn braids, and holding a glass of beer.  

“How?” He asked.

Nora shrugged at him.  He recognised the gesture.  It had come to his notice that when she was uncertain his little queen imitated some of his physical actions, apparently finding some confidence in them.

It moved him.

It moved parts of him a great deal indeed.

“Your people really can’t tell the difference between one human servant and another.  And I’m really quite small, so I just grabbed a platter of cakes and walked on the ship early, then I hid in a storage compartment, ate the cakes, changed into the dress, and walked off at the back of the crowd.”

“Many people will be executed for this,” he lied easily, wanting to see her response.

Nora now looked at him, worry plain on her face, “Please don’t mean that.  You… it’s not anyone’s fault.”

“My security, moreover your security, must be better than that.  Doubt not my sincerity.  As a queen, as  _ my  _ queen, you must be guarded at all times.  Even from yourself.”

“Take it out on me.  Send me away then.  Or lock me up.”  She sounded terrified.  

“Hey, boss,” Theunis started to speak.

“I would recommend silence, Barren.”

Nora ignored both of them took two steps forward and knelt before him, her head down, “If you’re going to do that then you should start with me.  It’s my fault.  I ignored you.  That’s treason, right?  I’d rather you killed me than I had to live with knowing I got those other people killed…  And that way you can play the new queen lottery again and probably get a better option than me... Loki.”

Barren started at hearing her use the king’s name with no honorific attached.  Loki snapped his fingers and pointed at the stairs and the engineer knew well enough to leave quickly.  As he did, he muttered something under his breath about getting something now.  

Loki did not care what he was on about, he refused the allow anyone to see Nora on her knees.  Anyone other than himself, needless to say.

“I will not execute you, my dramatic little queen,” he said, solemnly, to match the seriousness of her face. Even though her pointed chin angled stubbornly towards him while her eyes studied the floor as she pretended to be modest and humble.  

His peasant queen was as humble as his demonic valet, which was to say not at all but trying to hide it.  

“I suppose I still owe you a wedding present.  You may have their lives for it.”

Then she looked up and smiled at him, her eyes bright and merry, and maybe a little unsurprised.  The girl clearly thought she knew him.  “Thank you,” she said standing.

“You take pleasure in courting danger, Nora,” he said, reaching to pick up his drink, which he held to his lips, whispering to the grain and the water and heat and time and catalyst that made them one, pushing hard on his power.  He took her wrist where it was covered by the red wool dress she wore and pulled her onto the farthest point of his knee, handing her the glass, “Drink.”

Nora looked like she was considering saying no, but then saw the look in his eyes and clearly thought better of it, taking the cold, tempered glass in her hands, “This really should be drunk at room temperature.  Or so I’ve read,” she fussed but downed the liquor anyway. 

When she had set the glass down he slid his hand along her throat, up her cheek, and behind her head, pulling her mouth down to his, easily overpowering her temporary resistance as she realized his touch was not freezing, or even cold.

He kissed her with deep, luscious sweeps of his tongue, stroking hers in turn, and then suckling on it, while lifting his leg just enough so she slipped down his thigh to nestle against his body.

“ _ Aree,  _ being we are in a place for dancing, we should dance,” he whispered into her mouth before taking her into another kiss.

“Wait, what?”  She said, struggling, “How?”

“The same spell as I cast on the tea can be cast on other potables as well, they results are simply much shorter in duration than if used in conjunction with the correct herbs,” he lied again, not wanting to tell her yet the truth about the eldritch marks he had traced on her body, that matched his own caste and clan markings.

“Oh,” she said softly, and then pushed herself against him with all of the eagerness of her youth and all of the clumsiness of her inexperience.  He loved the way her hands scrambled to touch all of him, but then went lax on his shoulders as she fell with innocent selfishness into her own pleasure.

 

The last ten minutes or so had not gone the way Nora thought they would.  

She knew from the moment she had decided to sneak onto the ship for the trip to Grissbu that it was only a matter of time until the King found her out.  At first she was certain someone would catch her when she was boarding, but there were _ so many  _ servants and the palace was so large, that another little human that no one was looking too closely at got lost easily in the mix.

Then, she felt there was a good chance that her would somehow just sort of know she was there once he boarded himself.  But the party of Aesir, and those chosen to travel with them, had all already been imbibing hugely before they left.  Not the King… not Loki of course, who seemed to enjoy watching other people be foolishly drunk more than he enjoyed drinking, but the rowdiness of the others gave her arguably even more cover than the storage locker she was sitting in.

Finally, she was positive that Loki or someone would notice her when she climbed into one of the conveyances that was taking them into the massive city, but she had fallen in with the back of Barren’s group of mostly Midgardian party goers, and the expense of her dress and jewelry had been their own passport.

She was only sad that she hadn’t been able to see more of the city as they drove through it.  It was just a blur of noise and light, more than she had ever seen in her life.  Shikkawa proper, when she had lived there as a student, had seemed enormous and intimidating, and she knew that it could fit several times over within the sprawling chaos of Grissbu.

When he had spotted her in the crowd, trying to not stare like a moron at the barely dressed figures - some Midgardian, some Jotnar, and some alien - and the vast space of the dark and eerily lit club, and the strangeness of the band who played lays and roundelays and reels and bransles and even an astonishingly fast troika (that Nora longed to dance, it being her favorite) but on instruments that used energy to make them louder, that both distorted and enhanced their sounds.  She had heard of such music but had never experienced it before.

It was shocking but intensely exciting and she had found herself trying to mimic some of the movements of the dancers when the King had spotted her.

But none of that was as exciting as facing the king where he lounged indolently in a great chair, his brilliant, crimson eyes observing her coldly despite their fiery colour.  His horns had been wrapped in thin chains that glinted in the dim lights, their golden reflection offering the only warmth in the room.  And she found it hard to concentrate on anything but the way his long, leather-clad legs were spread widely apart and the growing thickness between them.

When he had threatened to have her guards and maybe some of the servants executed, her heart nearly broke, but there was a part of her that longed to believe that he was just toying with her, punishing her for her disobedience.  But she wasn’t sure.  

All of the fun had gone out of her little adventure and all she could think was those families losing someone because she wanted to see the city.  Because she was hurt that her husband didn’t want to spend time with her even when it would be easy to do so.

And then, almost as abruptly as that had all happened, she was now on his lap, being kissed, being touched, nearly too warm in her nice, new dress.

“You are so flushed,” he said drily, and then bit her tenderly above the high neckline.

“Warm…” she managed to say.

“I hate to see you suffer,” he said and she found herself naked, her legs wrapped around his long thigh.  “Much better.”

“I… we…” Nora looked around wildly.

Loki laughed and lifted to so he could lick her nipples, bringing them to painfully tight points while her she writhed between the hands that closed over her ribs.  “No one can see us,  _ álfadrottning _ , I promise.  No one will dare approach.”

“I thought… you might… are you mad at me?”  She managed to keep her head together long enough to ask, and then felt like a silly child for how she put it.

He rubbed his head against her chest, preening his horns and nipping here and there, “No.  Only with myself.  You are-.”  He stopped himself with another kiss, and she noticed that his teeth, the sharp ones that sat where fangs might on a cat or dog, seemed longer.

Nora leaned into his mouth and he took more and more.  She grasped his horns, the chains binding them biting into her fingers and when they slipped down to their base the king moaned, his mouth everywhere, tasting, teasing, making her keen with longing until her wet rolled down her legs to drip from her curled toes.

“Please.  I want-”

He looked up at her with a cruel smile, “This, I shouldn’t wonder?” He asked, laying a long fingered hand over the enormous bulge that strained on the leather of his trousers.  Then his other hand cupped between her legs, two fingers invading her, stretching and seeking, their cerulean disappearing into her dark hair and pink flesh.  They found out something about her body that she didn’t know and it made her howl and spend over over his palm, her cunt grasping and pulsing over and over as she rode out the bliss of it, slumping into his arms.

Loki lay her on the thick carpets and knelt between her legs. Nora was astounded.  The King was on the floor.  He was touching a place where people walked, with his leather-encased knees of course, but still!

He stared at her steadily, frowning as he licked his hand clean of her.  “You are barely more than a virgin and should be used more gently,” he offered her that unfeeling smile again as he opened the hooks on his fly and let his indigo dark erection buck into his grip.  He worked it slowly back and forth, hypnotising her a bit with the languor of his strokes, “Perhaps later I might have time for  _ gentleness _ , but for now -”

He yanked her legs farther apart and crawled over her, thrusting in as he took her head between in his hands so he could look into her eyes, then her wrists tight in his fist while his hips surged and retreated.  Nora’s legs, still shaking, wrapped themselves around his thighs and when he felt their touch Loki let her go so he could snag her knees, now riding high upon her, her ankles locked behind his arms, his faintly cool, hard flesh rubbing the nub at the crest of her sex in a way both hard and wonderful.

There were noises coming from where they met, both their mouths and their sexes.  

Everything ached.

Everything felt like heaven.

She felt another peak coming and then arriving, making her scream forbidden, human curses, conjoining with guttural, Jotunn obscenities as Loki lost himself in her heat.

Afterwards, he rolled off before she was crushed to a pulp beneath him.  “When we return to the palace, you will need a hot bath,” he said, wrapping her in his discarded cloak.  

“How are you going to get me back there without letting everyone else know I disobeyed you,” she asked with a little raise of her eyebrow.  “Cause I’m guessing you are going to want that to be a state secret.”

Loki picked her up, giving her that quelling expression she liked so much, “Yes.  Do not worry.  We will be taking a short-cut.”

“What?” She asked, and then shrieked as a… nothingness, a void, opened in the air and the King stepped through carrying her into the yawning gap.

 

Theunis Barren stepped behind the dancehall for a smoke, his hands shaking.  The king wasn’t always the most… stable of males, even if in his own mercurial way he made a kind of sense.  But he had been genuinely angry at the queen’s little trick.  Angry and worried for her.  Both emotions were not typical for Loki, who liked to seem as if he viewed his pet world with haughty amusement and an aristocratic lack of concern.

He walked to the mouth of the alley to keep warm.  The clean cold of the palace was different that the dirty cold of a wet fall night in his home city and he was no longer used to it.  

While he stood there looking at the lights of the buildings, several of which he owned and most of which had been built or improved using his creations a vagrant, one of the endless number that clogged the few cities of Midgard, approached him, moving slowly both from age and from trepidation.  He was small and bent with extreme age, rare for any human not of the privileged class, wrapped in a blanket that covered a disgustingly filthy coat and work pants that were too large so had been roughly hacked off at the ankles.  He stank so bad that he made the damp garbage in the alley smell like Lady Tye’s gorgeously fresh cunt by comparison.

When he reached Barren, one of the Jotunn guards that Nora had eluded stepped up to stop the frail ancient, but Barren waved him off.  “I think I can handle this one, tiny.”  He popped the smoke into his mouth and found his wallet, pulling out a sheaf of bills, “Here, go buy yourself some seeds and you can plant them on that coat of yours,” he said, handing the old man the stack.

The beggar nodded his thanks, bowing over and over so the scarf covering his head fell briefly back, giving Theunis a good look at a pair of surprisingly sharp blue eyes and an half-laughing smile.

Apparently pleased with his good fortune, the old man walked slowly and with great discomfort to an all night market in a much cheaper and dirtier part of town and stood outside of it drinking cup of hot, ersatz java and eating a day old roll smeared with honey and oleo.  After he was finished he fished into his pocket and pulled out the note that had been secreted in with the bills.

In a long supposed dead language it read :

 

Vostè i el nostre amic matern tenien raó sobre ella. 

Estava equivocat. 

Això una vegada. 

M'hi apunto.*

 

Stíofán was not surprised, and balled the tiny piece of paper up, swallowing it with the last cold, sugar-y bit of his drink.  He nodded once in the direction he was headed and walked into the night, knowing Taliah - his self-appointed guardian would be close behind.

  
  


(trans.  You and our motherly friend were right about her.  I was wrong, just this once.  I'm in.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	9. Sometimes You Can Not Avoid The Truth No Matter How Clever You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora have a typical, couple's conversation

The king’s valet barely lifted a brow at the sight of Loki entering into his chambers through a void in the air, his new queen, naked except for a cloak, shivering slightly in his arms, when they was supposed to be on the other side of the planet.

The king officially, the queen less so, Ceorl hazarded.

Rather, he neatly set aside the boots he was polishing, stood, put his jacket back on and offered a small bow.  “Will you be wanting a bath, sire?”

“For the queen, so make it quite hot.  Add the contents of the purple glass bottle with the black stopper in my workroom to it.  Her majesty did not take to the cold of the between very well.”  He looked down at Nora with a frown, “I am not certain why.”  

 

When Ceorl left, Nora jumped out of the king’s arms landing with a thump but keeped her legs under her.  

Damn he was high up there. 

“Because it was cold,” she said, pulling the cloak tighter around her and going to squat in front of the fireplace until the bath was ready.  

“You should not-” Loki started to say something, then stopped himself.  “The cold in the void is of a different order than the cold of my body, it seems.  In that state of undress you should be frozen solid from it, so it seems the mar- magic I gave you is working, if not as completely as I would have imagined.”

Nora looked at him over her shoulder, where he was seated at his desk, writing something, “Are you getting a stutter?”

He raised an autocratic eyebrow, and Nora turned back to the fire, a thrill of nerves going through her at being quelled again.  There was something about incurring the king’s annoyance, and the threat of perhaps more - which she had seen just a shade of at the club - that made her want to see how far she could go.  What it would take to make him lose that impassive, impressive hauteur.  During their times together in bed it came close to happening.  There were glimmers of something beneath that perfectly smooth exterior, but either they were gone before she could truly see them, or she would be too lost to pleasure to concentrate on them.

The king waited for her to apologize.

He could keep waiting.  Because she could tell there was something he was keeping from her.  There were probably hundreds of things he was keeping from her, Nora reasoned, but one of them seemed to have to do with her, and that wasn’t fair.

He already had all of the advantages.

They stared at each other in silence for several minutes until Ceorl told them the bath was ready.

 

Loki looked at Nora as she shed his cloak and stepped gingerly into the hot water, using a touch of seidr to see the hidden marks he had traced onto her skin.  To see if he had made a mistake, turned a line the wrong way, or if an incision was less than perfectly formed.  

As far as he could tell they were perfect, as he expected all of his works to be.

So why had she still been affected by the cold of the place between?  Granted, it was not much of effect.  The frozen, dead air of that void would easily kill many mortals, especially ones who were for all intents and purposes naked.  And for a brief moment he felt his heart seize in his chest when she started to shiver, sinking deeper into the inadequate protection of his cloak.  

But other than her skin turning to bright gooseflesh, and a few chatters of her teeth, she had seemed well enough.  

Still…

Perhaps it was because he had not marked her face.  But he had balked at the idea of giving her the crescent that crowned his own forehead.  No matter that she was his queen on Midgard, she was not in actuality royal and it would be tantamount to sacrilege in his mind to pretend she was so.

He watched her settle her small form into the hot water, leaning back with a wince of pain and then a sigh of pleasure, and was instantly hard and wanting.  

It was maddening to feel this way.  To be so out of control of himself constantly in her presence.  

When she dipped herself under the water and then out, drops formed like tiny jewels on the tips of her now bright red nipples.   Loki sprawled on the edge of the massive tub and handed her a cloth.

“Stand up and wash yourself,” he ordered.

 

Nora took the cloth, and gave him a bit of a grimace, “Do you think I don’t know how to use a damned tub now?”  She knew she was being contrary, but this was getting ridiculous.

“Not at all,” the king said, now stretching out on the ground beside the cistern, his chin and cheek resting on his hands so he was at the same level as her face, his eyes slitted and his smile at once evil and amused, “I merely wish to watch you wash yourself.”  He didn’t look at her as he spoke, but at his own long fingers as he trailed them in the water, causing masses of steam to rise.  

He cupped his hand and raised a handful to his lips and blew very softly in her direction, causing a snake of mist to form and coil through the air towards her, wrapping around her waist, her breasts, and her neck like a velvet rope that lifted her to standing.  

“Very pretty,” he said, still not looking as he sniffed at various cakes of soap that were on the table next to him.  Finally, he found one he liked and tossed it to her.  It smelled of rosemary, apples, and something warm.  “Begin,” he commanded, finally meeting her eyes, his own narrowing, smiling like a viper.

Nora grabbed a cloth and got up a good lather and began to wash, starting with one of her feet, hopping slightly and hoping she wouldn’t fall and send a wave of water over the king.  He was already in an odd mood, and probably still angry about her adventure, so who knew what he would do if she got him soggy now?  She bobbed and danced a bit in place but managed to keep upright.

With a graceful gesture the king sat up, one leg curled under him, the other bent up and he leaned on his knee, watching her with a frown.  She put her foot down and started on the other.

The frown grew harder and the water started to grow cold under his annoyance.

“What?”  Nora said, throwing down the soap and towel with a splash, wrapping her arms around her middle.

Shaking his head slowly, he smiled at her.  A blinding smile, with not calculation to it.  “You are so bold most of the time, so clever, that it is easy to forget that you are not the kind of woman who understands what I mean when I ask you to wash yourself for me.”  He crooked a finger and the rope of steam gently tugged her towards him.  

When she was at the edge of the cistern, he patted the rim, “Put your foot here,” he said, picking up a different bar of soap and cloth.  When he soaked them in the water the heat flushed his skin indigo and the white foam when he soaped the cloth smelled of something spicy and something sweet.  

“Stay still,” he told her, as he took her foot onto his leather clad knee and started to carefully and slowly clean each of her toes.  

Nora couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.  She wasn’t entirely sure the king hadn’t taken her up on her offer to be executed and this was some weird version of Elysium as he leisurely worked his way up her leg, periodically picking up an empty ewer and using it to rinse her.  His hands were wonderful, strong and cool, and he eased her muscles even as he cleaned her skin.

When he reached the top of her thigh, he set her foot back down and motioned for her to give him the other.

“Um… isn’t this going to ruin those?”  She said, pointing to his pants.

As she looked she saw he was hard again.  

He stayed concentrated on his work, “It may come as a surprise, but I have more than one pair of trousers.”

“But those are very nice!”  She squeaked and shouted the last word as the rope of steam tightened and shifted, covering her nipples and rubbing against them.  

Ignoring her concerns with his clothing, he asked, “Do you know why I wanted you to do this?”  He slid the cloth up the inside of her thigh and lightly brushed the hair between her legs, just barely teasing the hypersensitive little part of her at the peak of her cleft.

“I-” she licked her lips, pressing down a little, hopefully, “I think so.  You thought it would be-” She squeaked again and jumped as he carefully washed her there as well, “You wanted to watch.”

Because her knees were getting weak, she reached out to put her hand on Loki’s shoulder and found herself clutching one of his horns instead, the gold chains strangely warm.  He moaned and stood up, her hand slipping along the length of the horn, then down through his hair, and then to hold his hip as he towered over her, the sunken tub making her even shorter than normal.

The coil of mist evaporated around her and Loki threw the soap and cloth away in a furious motion, “To kneel before you… To wash your peasant feet!”  He stalked away, furious.  And then stopped himself before he left, his voice now controlled.

“I have always been a patient creature, Nora.  I have had to be.  The things I have wanted have come slowly but inexorably to my grasp because I had the restraint to wait.  To endure  _ anything _ in order to reach my desired ends, and to allow no distractions.  But somehow you - unknown and unbidden - have fallen to me from nowhere and I find myself in a constant state of haste and complication.  It is abhorrent to me to find myself in such a… condition of weakness over anything, least of all in the matter of something as… puerile as the emotions you stir in me.  To say nothing of my lack of control over my urges.”

“But-” before she could speak he cut her off.

“I had thought having you here might be useful.  That your fellow lesser Midgardians would be placated by having one of their own as their queen, but no.  It is not worth the trouble.  _ You  _ are not worth the trouble.  It seems that this arrangement cannot continue.  Tomorrow you can tell Lady Tye where you would like to live.  You may choose anywhere in the world but the palace.  Theunis will be pleased to create anything you wish.  Finish your bath and then return to your rooms.”

And he was gone.

There were lots of insulting words in there.  Complication,  Abhorrent.  Puerile.  Peasant.  Which was honest, but not very polite.  Placated.  Trouble.  Not  _ worth _ the trouble.

Nasty stuff, spoken coldly.  

But Nora had grown up in a house with more men than women.  Always talking and talking and talking and so rarely saying what they really meant.   And no matter what everyone seemed to think, she wasn’t dumb.  She grabbed the robe that Ceorl had left for her, and pulled it on, pushing her feet - which were very clean now - into a pair of velvet slippers and followed him.

She was proud she only had to stop and step back into the slippers twice.  She was getting the hang of this elegance thing.

When Nora found him, just minutes later, Loki had already changed his clothes so he now worked at his desk in a black silk caftan, his horns now undecorated, his hair in a practical braid.  He did not look up at her.  “I know that you still grow easily confused by geography of the palace, so let me tell you, these are not your rooms.”

“Yes, they are,” she said, crossing her arms.  

He still didn’t look up, “Stop mimicking my gestures.  They look foolish on someone so miniscule. Then leave me.”

“No.”

 

Loki looked up, his eyes narrowing.  Who did she think she was? A queen in fact rather than just name? And why was she smiling like that? “Consider that a command and not a suggestion,” he offered.

“You’re in love with me,” she said, turning on her toes, heading towards his bedchamber.

“WHAT?”  He roared after her.

She turned at the door and looked back, dropping her robe with a flirtatious smile, one that she had clearly learned watching the courtiers that surrounded him.  She spread her hands to indicate him, and then motioned towards herself.  “You.  Are in love.  With me.”  And walked away naked but for her dainty  green slippers.

“Come away from my chamber, Nora,” he called out.

For twenty entirely galling seconds he waited for her.  But, as he saw when he found himself for some reason following her, she had made herself at home in his bed.  She was still naked, propped up on a mountain of pillows, reading a book, and eating his fruit.  Those little slippers neatly lined up where she had stepped out of them to climb up.

When she saw him now she patted the space beside her and smiled, “Ready for bed, husband?”

“Go,” he said with calm disinterest.

“No.”

“Now.”

“Still no.”

“I do not love you.  The very concept nauseates me, as you are beginning to.  This is what comes of giving too much favor to a lesser creature.  They assume too much.   And I have already sent word to Ke’len that she will be my bedmate tonight,” he said, picking one of the largest and most sinister of his Jotunn warband, mentally reminding himself to actually send for her once Nora was gone.  Ke’len was always ready for a hard, indifferent cock.

“You do.  And you didn’t.”

“Do not force me to shame you by having you removed.”

“You won’t do that.”

Nora was now the calm and amused one.  He hated it, and he found himself running his hands through his hair in frustration.

“Jotunns do not love.  It is… impossible.  And if they were to love I would certainly not choose you.”

“You really don’t know anything about this, do you?  You don’t choose.  And you should be even happier to be in love with me than you already are.  And you are happy about it,” she started ticking off points on her fingers.  “First Jotunn prince to be king of his own world.  First king of Midgard.  First non-Asgardian to be considered one their gods, or so Thor told me.  Now the first Jotunn to fall in love. Your legend is complete.”

It was maddening!  Loki felt his calm begin to fray.  This stupid child needed to leave his bed.  

“I am not-”

She stopped smiling, “Don’t worry about being lonely in it.  I’m in love with you, too.”

This was firmer ground.  “Of course you are, but it has no bearing on-”

She dared to interrupt him again, “I am in love with you.  With  _ Loki _ .  Not my king.  My king I just want to-”  Now Nora blushed a bit and faltered, no longer on solid ground, no longer the blithely confident woman.

She was charming either way.   How absurd that all of that human garbage about hearts and love should actually have some basis in fact, because her words made his ache.   

And he was, to use an appropriately Midgardian vulgarity, utterly fucked.

So it made sense to have his queen, his love, join him that state.

When he stripped the blankets back from her he could see the blush covered every inch of her, and the heat of her came at him in waves.  “With my queen I want to as well.”

Nora gulped, “Say it first.”

He capitulated, unvictorious for the first time in his life.  “I love you, Nora.”

When she opened for him he saw she was wet but tender from his earlier having of her.  He slid himself slowly into the boiling cauldron of her body, and she arched up to him, offering him her breasts, still sore from before, her neck exposed and vulnerable, her desire so guileless and even more eager than before, her cunt clutched and drew him deeper.  

With as much care as possible Loki made love for the first time in his life.  It tasted of raspberries and apprehension, and was wilder than anything he had known before.  Nora came quickly, shuddering, her breath snagging in her throat, lyrical noises being pressed into his mouth with her messy kisses, and he pushed himself to take her further, and further still, crooning words that he had never used before, for feelings he had no understanding of.

Loki’s own release cost him what was left of his heart.  He lay awake all night, Nora pressed to his side, more frightened than he had been since he had been a tiny child in his father’s court, fearing each day that the Emperor would finally choose to eliminate the shame of his first born’s abnormality and deformities.

He held his queen and plotted till dawn. 

  
  
  
  



	10. Friends are Often Found In Strange Places, but Enemies are Usually Close to Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora celebrate the holidays. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Holidays to all of my beautiful readers. Even if all that means to you is that you maybe got some extra time off and can now shop the After Christmas sales.

Nearly every culture that had a winter had some kind of mid-winter festival, a time of lights and feasting to break the back of the dark, ice-bound days and give the people something to hold on to when they were trapped, frightened, and fighting a perfectly natural desire to kill those trapped with them before they were killed themselves.

Or, as Loki thought of it, daily family life on Jotunheim.

Because he was a benevolent king, and recognised the power of ritual celebration, he had not only allowed his human subjects to have such a celebration, but had codified it, given it a name, and even set a fixed date on which everyone on Midgard celebrated - Isstid, on the tenth day of Mörsugur.  

He had been tempted to set the date on the twenty-fifth day of Gormánuður, for his birthday, but Bone Marrow Sucking month was a better time for a festival of lights.   Even if a good portion of the planet was in summer or simply never experienced real cold, everyone liked a party and a day off of work.

The celebration in the palace was shown on both public and private screens around the world, as were many of the preparations.  It had been tradition to show the King symbolically signing the first of the cards that were sent to all of the official stadt- and householders around the planet as his blessing for the New Year and as a sign of their position being maintained.  

Every year Nora’s family would join the rest of their community in the great square near the lake, to watch their local householders - Henry and Nadezhda - go through the solemn ritual of the opening of the envelope.  She remembered being so nervous as a little girl, practically hopping up and down, from the cold and from the excitement of the day.  Would it be  _ the _ card, with the handsome new portrait of the King that was painted every year, or would it be the dreaded blank page, signifying what was probably going to be an abrupt and bloody change of local government? 

The fires that ringed the square, the smells of the food stands and pine swags, the singing, the potential arrival of Jotunn troops...  It had been thrilling when she was child.

As she grew up she cared less about that and more about drinking half-strength glug with her friends, flirting with boys from the other side of their region, all of them playing at cynicism, claiming that it didn’t matter who their householders were, that it wouldn’t change anything for them.  Which, as their parents knew, was not true.  

Things could  _ always _ be worse.

But every year Nadezda pulled out the card.  She and Henry worked hard to keep the region quiet and productive, and their heads off of pikes.

This year would be different.

Nora would be signing the cards at the King’s side.  She would be _ on  _ the cards.

When Loki had announced they would be using their wedding portrait for the Isstid greeting rather than his image alone his privy council had been subdued, since they had already had their upset over the Queen being invited to join them on a potentially permanent basis.  Barren had been the only one who seemed unsurprised.  

In fact, if Nora hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she saw a small, satisfied smile flit across Barren’s mouth.  But she knew he thought she was an unwashed, peasant, moron, so he probably just pleased that she was now annoying all of the council and not just him.  Or he had gas or something.  

And while he was factually correct about her being a peasant, and she was sporadically a moron when it came to baiting the King, but Loki had made a nightly ritual of being very certain she was washed.

He took up the task himself on the nights she was safe for him to touch, and watched on the nights she wasn’t, now that she finally understood what he wanted from her when he asked her to bathe for him, having kindly demonstrated for her.

At length.  

Nora found herself drifting away on that memory.

Loki leaned close, his icy lips perilously close to her ear, “You have the most carnal little smile at the moment  _ auðr, _ and while I am quite pleased with it, I would not care to share it with the populace.  They are unworthy and I would no doubt find my palace besieged with suitors wishing to draw my queen away from me,” he said, gesturing to the imagers that were about to begin broadcasting them across Midgard.  

They were in the same room where her interview had been filmed, one of the only spaces in the palace that might be considered cosy rather than grand.  A small table had been set up, its red wood highly polished and gleaming in the firelight, a small, neat stack of cards and envelopes next to a gold inkwell.  The official pen, made of green and blue glass, rested in a velvet-lined case.  It was a disconcerting feeling to be within a scene that she had watched every year from the time she was old enough to remember.  

She whispered back, watching Loki shiver ever so slightly as the heat of her breath licked him like fire, “When can I have some tea?  It’s been ages.”

He chuckled, “It has been three days.  You have grown insatiable.  You may have some on Isstid Eve, and not before.  It can be unhealthy for you to drink the herbs too often.”

Nora leaned closer, as close as she could bear before her skin of her face began to burn with cold, and the muscles ache,  “I was always insatiable, I just didn’t know what I was starving for.  It could have been food.  We had some really bad years on the farm, you know?”

One of his gloved hands sought one of hers under the table, pulling it to his lap and pressing it along his heavy, silk-covered length.  The leather creaked as he slid her hand back and forth hard enough that it had to hurt him.  

All the while, his face remained impassive, serene, calmly lifting the pen with his other hand, dipping it in the well, watching as the ink flowed upward through the glass, and then tapping the nib once to eliminate excess. 

It rang in the still air.

His cock jumped under her hand, eager for more attention than a mere, rough rub.

Loki’s expression never changed.

Nora’s heart hurt.  What must he had gone through to have achieved such perfect mastery over himself?   She knew him now, just a little, and she knew that all of his perfection, his disinterest, his bland amusement, was no more natural to him than being a queen was to her.  Which is why she was determined to play her role as well as he did his.

She just needed a little more practice.  

“Your body is so hot right now you are near to melting the mountains,” he murmured, “and the color of your cheeks clashes with your gown.”

And to figure out how to stop blushing.

Lady Tye nodded to the cameraman and Loki addressed the world with chill hauteur, all the while tormenting himself with Nora’s hand.

When it was her turn to sign her name, Nora held the pen so tightly she nearly snapped it, but the signature she had been practicing for weeks looked beautiful.

 

The next two weeks were filled with pageantry and politics, Loki’s two favorite things.

During that time Nora attended near daily privy council meetings with him, sitting at his side, taking copious notes in her undistinguished but very precise hand - a remnant of her time as a Hyrokkin scholar.  She was young enough that her brain still worked as a student’s, allowing her to remember names and details.  

He was amused that she waited until her fifth session before she spoke.   If it can be considered mere speaking to have her practically vibrating with annoyance while Lord Kyrhyn discussed the movement of the main planetary space-port from  Heilongjiang to the - practically empty - wastes near Uluru on the Southern landmass.  

“Your father feels that it will be safer for the Jotunn ships, even if the weather is not optimal for our … preferences, the region’s mineral wealth should be useful for the construction of the new ships that Barron de-”

“Excuse me?”  Nora said, her voice rather tense.

Kyrhyn continued.

“-signed.  As well as allowing us to control access to the more strategically signif-”

“What about the workers at the spaceport now?”  Nora spoke over him.  His small Queen’s body seemed to contain a larger percentage of lung capacity and vocal power than was reasonable per her size, and she was able to drown out nearly anyone in his court, other than Loki himself.

But he had centuries of practice for making himself heard.  

He also had centuries of learning to make himself quiet, unnoticed.  He would have have to teach Nora that lesson some day as well, but for now he hid the broad smile that wanted to cross his face, leaned back to watch.

“Majesty?”  Kyrhyn appealed to him.

“Your Queen, _ my _ Queen, has a reasonable question.  Answer it,” he said, with an airy wave.

“Those who are considered most important for operations will be transferred to the Southern continent.  It may end up being the bulk of the workers, since the new location is so underpopulated.  And what population is there are not suited to heavy work,” he said a bit dreamily, “ but the Pitjantjatjara are quite beautiful.  For humans.”

“So you are going to not give jobs to the people who are there who might need them, and you are going to kidnap some of the people from the place you are taking all of their work away from?  Not just the spaceport, but all of the places where the  _ allúrach _ go?  Where the workers go?  And the hunters that bring in meat?  And the farmers?  And the working girls?  And what about the workers families?”

Loki noted her use of a forbidden bit of language but let it go unchecked, enjoying the horrified looks all around.

“Those households with two parents working within the port will be allowed to bring any children they might have produced.  It will help set up for future -”

“And the ones who don’t?”

Kyrhyn looked confused.  Tye and Barron looked rather uncomfortable as, for the first time in quite a while, they considered the smaller picture of the choices that they had helped to make.

Nora’s fists were so tight Loki thought she might split the skin across her knuckles as she made ready to let fly with a verbal barrage the likes of which few Jotunns had ever heard from a human mouth since the fall of Midgard.

Ultimately he was going to side with Kyrhyn.  He had little enough choice in the matter, as the Emperor got what the Emperor wanted.

For now.

Nora verbally dug her teeth into the shocked Kyrhyn and worried at him like a terrier on the hide of a bear.

A polar bear, naturally.

Loki would encourage some concessions that would make the move less onerous to the humans involved.  And he would have Tye leak the story that it was the Queen’s impassioned defence of her people that moved him to do so.

It would begin the campaign very nicely, and it would distract everyone who needed to be distracted.

 

The Isstudetide season went, for Nora, as follows:

During the first week she attended three fetes - the Fast of Chitrun (the first Jotunn Queen), celebrated with a feast of very sour pickled fruit and a handful of grain to commemorate her ultimate victory after her troops were sieged in for five hundred years and all nearly starved to death.  The Dance of a Thousand Swords - which commemorated a famous battle against the Vanir and proved that even dancing can be boring if you do it wrong.  And the Night of Eating - that was her’s and the King’s favorite. And five council meetings.

During the meetings she yelled at the King’s aunt Geror about a new idea to cut down on prisons by selling those who repeat their offenses for labor.  

She yelled, more politely, Lady Tye when she found out that schools in the privileged sectors - such larger parts of Alkebulan, the city of Grissbu, much of Rus, and so on - offered chances to learn things beyond simple ciphering, basic mathematics, and the like.  Wonderful things.  Things involving music, and movement, and drawing.  The children could play games with the seriousness that most other children could only devote to learning how to estimate grain yields.

(The King made a quiet statement about the Queen’s passionate love for _ all  _ children, and how moved everyone was who heard of it).

She started to yell at Hernir about a report on human soldiers being trained for interstellar flight until the King tapped his non-existent watch about needing to leave for a blessing ceremony in Fukuoka.  

She yelled at Barren because he was Barren and probably needed to be yelled at a lot more than he had been most of his life.

She didn’t yell at the King, because that was too private for the privy council.

During the second week of Isstudetide, Nora, along with a large group of children from both species, learned a ceremonial dance for the coming of spring from Samiah as part of an event broadcast over the screens.  She then taught the children a song about pigs that made them all laugh.

She had a fight with Baroness Geror again about the prisoners, since no, she didn’t think that shipping them offworld for service was a good idea either.  The King’s aunt literally threw up her hands and stomped out of the meeting, unable to deal with such stubborness in the face of a perfectly good solution to the problem of human detritus.

That time the King _ had _ given her a moderately quelling look, and then Nora had yelled at him when they were alone.

He laughed.

She hadn’t liked that at all.  So the next night at the Banquet of Stolen Joys (made up of dishes from the various planets the Jotunn empire had acquired) things had been a bit strained between them.  None of which kept either of them from eating more than anyone else at in the feasthall.  

The next morning, on Isstude Eve, the King had made his way to her rooms with a gift, apparently traditional for new Jotunn grooms to do on that day.  It was a box containing a high collar of wrought silver studded with emeralds and an edict commuting the sentences of any human being held in prison for any crime of survival - ie.  the theft of food, medicine, or for defending themselves or another from harm by any creature.  

Including any Jotunn who was not part of the army or the defence force.

(He also made a public statement about how he had been moved by the Queen’s passionate defence of, er, um, non-criminals who were forced by circumstance to act against their own, decent, natures. 

That had been a tricky one.)

The King’s annual address that night to the people showed a Queen positively glowing with adoration for her husband, and a King capable of showing compassion and love after seeing his domain anew through the eyes of his bride.

Town squares and halls were filled to bursting with celebrating humans watching with pride and happiness for the first time in generations.   Even in the homes of the wealthy and powerful a few tears were perhaps shed at the sight, although many eyes were no doubt rolled as well.  But with a certain affection for the sight of the tiny woman, dressed in green, smiling like the country girl she was, getting ready to go walking out with her beau.

At midnight everyone toasted the King as usual, but at 12:01, many  toasted the Queen as well.

Which is why it had to be kept as quiet as possible the next morning when her majesty was found terribly ill, vomit dripping from her mouth, her breath wheezing, her body sodden with ill-smelling sweat, a broken tea-cup still clutched in her hand.

 

  
  
  



	11. When the King is Quiet Everyone Else Had Best Be Silent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora heals. Loki plots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thank you to my beautiful Beta Caffiend, for putting up with my sloppy ways and hasty writing.

There was a flurry of panic in the Palace that worked its way through the cold, dark halls like a whisper that spread, taking on other voices that grew louder and louder as it passed through private rooms, through vast public spaces, down into levels of servants, and below that to the bowels of the earth where His Majesty kept his most dearly cherished prisoners.

Most of them craved even the slightest gossip, anything from above, all except for the prisoner at the farthest end of the lowest point beneath the mountain.

“Weide!  Weide!  Have you heard?  Someone killed the new queen!” He heard the next closest prisoner hiss loudly.

As ever, he ignored the voices, both without and within, turning his mind back to the calm of the stone walls around him.

“Weide!  Damn it, Kalmus, I know you can hear me.”

With a sigh, Weide stood and leaned against the door, whispering fiercely.  “Why do I care what happened to some girl I don’t know?  I’m sad for her, but-”

“You know why!”  

“No, Miles.  I don’t know, because unlike you I stopped believing in much of anything when I started WANTING him to put me down here.  And  _ you _ know why.   Now leave me alone.”

Then there was silence beneath the mountain. 

But within the mountain the terror was deafening.

 

The King entered the room ahead of his guards and Ceorl.  He was tangentially aware that somewhere between his chambers and the Queen’s, a few others had begun to follow him.  Lady Tye, Barren, other courtiers.  

None of them spoke.  Not even Barren.  

He had not realized the man was capable of quiet.

Within Nora’s rooms there was chaos.  Her attendants, in terror of him and none of them with any loyalty to their mistress, had all fled.  As much as he hated disorder, the King only became aware of the shambles about him when a piece of broken mirror powdered beneath his boot with a soft sigh. 

Within the inner chamber, only Lady Samiah sat with the Queen.  She had made some effort to care for her, having wiped some of the vomit from around her mouth, and having gently wrapped a handkerchief around Nora’s fingers that still seeped blood from where she had convulsively squeezed and shattered the delicate teacup that had delivered her the poison.

“Sire,” she said rising quickly, her radiantly dark skin flushed purple with fear as she stared at the ground.

The King ignored her, sitting on the bed in her place.  Nora’s breaths came in jagged rasps from the open hole of her mouth.  Her lips were grey and covered in film, and a putrid fetor came from both within her and from the sweat that had soaked through her clothing, while the mattress itself with drenched in her urine.

“Ceorl,” he said calmly, “call for one of the human physicians in the palace.  You know which one I prefer, and fetch for him the sandalwood box from my work room.”

His excellent man left without a word.

“Sire, perhaps we might-”  Lady Tye moved forward, reaching a hand towards Nora.

“Do not think to touch her, lady,” His Majesty said, his voice no different than if he had said no he would not care for more wine.  “I know you are no friend to the Queen.”

A sound of shocked fear came from his advisor, “Majesty, I swear to you that I have no malice for Her Majesty.  None.”

“Indeed?”  

With a very steady hand, the King picked up the still clean end of one of the sheets and fastidiously dabbed away more of the sick from Nora’s mouth, careful not to make contact.  Even so, he noted that her skin was quite cold.  For a human. 

“Majesty, I-”  Tye’s voice shook.

“Samiah.  When you found Her Majesty, how long would you estimate it had been since her attendants abandoned her this morning?”

Some of them were no doubt hiding in the servant’s hall, hoping that they could claim they had not been on duty that morning.  Others, more frightened and foolish, had clearly ransacked the Queen’s belongings and were probably headed through the mountains now, hoping to reach a boat on one of the lakes and make it to Novosibirsk before nightfall took them and they froze.

They would fail and their bodies would be found in the spring.  Not, the King thought, because of what had happened to his wife.  He was certain none of the servants were involved.

But because they had left her alone to die.

“It is hard for me to say, Sire.  But all were gone when I arrived.  Sire, my sister-”  

“No need to fret.  I know that it is unlikely any Midgardian is responsible for my Queen’s condition.  Eitr is not so readily available on Terra, is it?”

There was a sharp inhale from the anxious mass behind him, even his normally stoic guards stirred where they loomed, tall and icy.  Eitr was the stuff of life and death itself.  Even the  Svartálfar, poison-masters without equal, were loathe to use it often, so dangerous was it to even handle.  How could the tiny queen still be alive, if someone had given her something so malign?

“Though she be little, she is fierce,” Loki murmured, quoting his favorite human playwright, “and must be fiercely guarded from this time forwards.”  

While he sat there, neither moving nor speaking as he willed his wife to breathe more easily, the King noted several things happening behind him.  Samiah put an arm around her sister.  Though Tye was the politician of their family, Samiah was its strength.  She was due for a reward for her loyalty to the Queen.  Another might have stepped away, unwilling to risk his wrath by being the one to report this crime.  

His guards, all hand chosen from his warband, stood as still as rock, not even exchanging looks.  They knew there were not traitors in their ranks.  Barren and his aunt Geror silently slipped out of the room.

Barren would be reporting to Asgardian contacts, and Geror would be informing his father.

“Master,” Ceorl had returned with the doctor - tall for a Midgardian, with sickly pale skin and the short hair favored by those who worked with their hands - who carried a small, carved box that seemed heavy for its size.

Loki spoke without looking, “Do you understand what that is, healer?  And how you are to use it?”

“I believe so, Sire.  Your… aide? has explained it to me, but I’ve never worked with this substance before, so I can’t say-”  

The doctor had a pleasant voice for a Midgardian, but the King was not interested in excuses or delay.  He had matters to attend to and the quicker he could hand his queen off to the healer the better.

With a negligent wave of his hand, the King rose and turned to leave, “Of course you have not.  If you follow the instructions you have been given- to the letter- all will be well and my wife will merely require a few days of nursing.  If not, and she dies, _ you  _ will require a few years of torture, followed by dying as well.  I expect regular reports.”

As he walked past the physician, someone preternaturally observant might have noticed that the back his Majesty’s hand brushed the man’s forearm but had no seeming effect.

Without a look back to the bed, he was gone.

As he exited the King heard the doctor gently thank Samiah for offering to stay and assist, but that Ceorl would be enough help.

Nora had never been sick a day in her life.  She’d been hurt now and then.  Broken toes from being stepped on by a sow in farrow.  A broken wrist from falling out of the loft while pitchforking down hay.  Luckily she had been almost done, so her fall had been mostly soft.  A bad cut from a nail that was sticking from a post.  More bruises and nicks than could be counted.  More strains and sprains than she could recall.  But never sick.

Peasants don’t get sick.  They can’t afford it.  She raved as much to the tall, warm-skinned man that was frowning over her as he gently undressed her and carried her to the couch by the fire and began to sponge her off with some strange, black water that seemed to sink into her skin rather than slide off.

“Shhh… No- Your Majesty… shhhh… you need to preserve your energy,” he said softly, now washing her with normal water and soap that smelled like rosemary and a broken stick of peppermint.  She could only barely understand him.

He had nice hands, long and sure.  

She vaguely wondered if he should be touching her.  Since she was a queen.  And married.  And her husband - if that had been real because right at the moment nothing seemed very real but how horrible everything felt - probably didn’t like that kind of thing.  He was very particular about her cleanliness, after all.

She tried to tell him that, while also trying to tell him that she didn’t feel good, and that she was really, probably not sick.

Sure, she had thrown up now and then, sneezed, coughed, been ‘warm’, had aches everywhere, and there had been plenty of throats raw as a spring morning, but never what could be called sick.

She thought she was telling him that.  While asking why she couldn’t feel better.  She heard Ceorl at one point and she wanted to ask him too, but then she may have started crying because it was hot and it was cold and something was squeezing her head.   Squeezing and squeezing and it hurt so bad.

Now, as she floated in and out of miserable consciousness, Nora was willing to concede that this one time she was possibly sick.  But she was then greatly relieved when the man looking after her, speaking Midgardian with a thick accent of some kind that she didn’t know, carefully lifted her so she was sitting and held something to her lips, telling her she had been poisoned.

As she choked and vomited the contents of the cup over his chest, falling back to a queasy, colourless unconsciousness, Nora nodded, muttering, “Knew I wasn’t sick.”

And she must have been hallucinating, because she knew they were alone, but she thought she heard the King laugh.

 

“Sire,” one of his guards entered the King’s public office where he was looking at schematics for Barren’s newest ships.  They were quite an improvement on the old design, but the saved room from the cockpits had made much of that possible.

“Yes,” he asked idly.

“The All-Mother is hailing from Asgard, asking to speak to you and-” the enormous guard, his largest, Kitri, gulped slightly, “Prince Leofic has sent his condolences.”

“As ever my brother is ahead of himself,” the King answered serenely.  “Send word to him that my queen yet lives and I have every hope for her recovery.  And have Lady Tye speak to Queen Frigga.  It will give her something to do rather than sit and worry that I am about to have her dragged beneath the mountain.”

Kitri gave a quick bow and left, stepping around Ceorl, who looked mildly smudged after assisting the doctor with the Queen.

He exchanged a quick look with his master as they nodded to each other, and then went off to clean up.

 

Nora felt like she could be awake.  But her eyes wouldn’t open.

And her body had just loosed itself all over so she sobbed and moaned and felt humiliated when the same stranger who had been caring for her patiently stripped her again, bathed her again, and returned her to a fresh bed.

 

“Sire, your-”

“Father?” he finished.

“Yes.  He is on the great screen in the throne room.”

“I suppose I should take the call.”

 

The sound of the Emperor’s voice echoed through the halls and levels of the palace, the Jotunn words a harsh series of noises that even the other Jotnar could not make out.  

“If you are done with your harangue, Father, I do have some things in mind, special things, for when I discover who is responsible for this insult to ‘our family,’ as you so quaintly describe the near death of an innocent girl who is only here by the merest whim of chance.  But, as you have chosen to call the Queen, ‘family,’ I do have a plan that will ensure her safety going forward,” the King said mildly when his father finally allowed him to speak.

He had not taken a seat, preferring to be on his feet when facing his father.  He had also rarely bothered to even glance at the massive screen.  He knew what his sire looked like.

Laufey leaned forward on his throne, watching his son the way a cook might observe a piece of meat he suspected of having gone bad, his gleaming red eyes thinning with thought.  “What sort of plan, you scheming child?”

Looking at his nails and wondering if they needed regilding for the remainder of the seasons.  They had not been groomed since the Queen had been poisoned.  There were the tiniest of chips at the very edges, and he found them offensive.  “Mate markings, of course,” he looked up at the Emperor and gave him a puzzled smile, “what else could I intend?”

Perhaps he would change them to black backed with silver, and then add a dusting of it to his horns as well.  Gold seemed inappropriate in the face of the Queen’s condition.

_ “WHAT?1”  _

That roar could be made out by everyone, even if their Jotunn was rusty.  “You mean to honor a mere, a mere-”

“If we were Asgardian you could say ‘mere mortal’ but we are not, so let us settle for ‘mere Midgardian,’” the King said with great mildness.  “I thought it would please you, Father.  By making her my mate I will have officially taken myself out of the Imperial lineage, since I can no longer sire a pure-blooded heir.  Now you can just let Leofic and Lorgrim, and Liekki and Laugel and Len, and the other little L’s you and Mother produced after I left home, they can all fight amongst themselves for your throne.”

Now quiet as well, Laufey sat back, “I forbid it.”

“I would love to think that was because of your deep desire to retain me as your heir, recognising all of my accomplishments, strengths, and gifts, but I know it is just snobbery.  Which I usually approve of, but in this case does you no good.”

_ “Why...” _ the Emperor growled, not a question since he clearly knew the answer.

“Too late,” the King shrugged, drifting from the room and leaving his father to rage to an empty chamber.

 

Beneath the mountain ….

“Stiofan sent word.  She’s going to live.”  Miles whispered to him as they waited for their weekly shower, the only time they were allowed from their cells.

Kalmus sighed.  He had grown to love his prison and the peace of the stone.

 

When Nora finally, fully woke, it was just in time to catch one clear glimpse of her gentle physician.  He turned briefly at the door on his way out and she saw a thin, pink mouth, rather raw looking next to the paste coloured skin, his short dark hair and pale flesh both dirty from days of attending her.

She raised a hand to thank him, but he was gone, replaced by Samiah and a new host of servants who Nora didn’t know.

 

The gossip of the court over the following week that Her Majesty had been indisposed was that the King was indifferent, not visiting her, negligently listening to reports on her progress, his brief infatuation over as soon as it had started, once faced with her frailty.  

He was heartbroken, keeping to work so he would not be driven to distraction by grief.

He had been so revolted by her condition - covered in illness, sweat, and worse - that he was too revolted to take her back and when she recovered the Queen would be leaving the palace.

His rage was so great he had personally killed every one of her former servants.  

He was starting a new lottery, just in case.

He was discontinuing the lottery in Nora’s memory.

He had sent to Jotunheim for an actual wife.

He had sworn off all lovers for the rest of his life.

The last of these had he had found especially amusing.

 

“You look very well,  _ álfadrottning.” _

“Peasants, can’t keep us down,” she said without thinking.

Then Nora froze.  

Loki’s voice was soft, almost a whisper, and for a second she wasn’t sure she wasn’t imagining it.  She had imagined it over and over when she had been sick.  She had wanted him so badly, when she could think clearly enough to want anything other than for it to stop.  But he had never come.

If she hadn’t been in a grand chamber, dressed in a velvet gown by a vast fireplace, reading a book, she might have believed that he didn’t exist.  Or, more accurately, that her being the queen did not exist.  

But here they both were.

“Sire,” she said, trying to stand from the chaise, but he was quickly at her side, easing her back down.  Sitting with her.

“Loki,” he said into her ear, his cold breath sparking across her cheek, “call me Loki.  I need to hear you say it and then I can believe that you are well.”  His voice was husky and he choked a bit on his words.

He sounded uncertain.

The King was always certain, right or wrong.

Loki was not.

“I- you didn’t come,” she said, trying not to sound like a child, refusing to look at him.

“I could not.  Say my name,” he asked again.

“I wanted you.  I was scared.”

“Your doctor said you were so brave.  You never called out for me...” he said the last with both pride for her and a little sorrow.  “Call for me now.  Say my name.”

Nora turned and looked at him, his beauty so close it was like staring into a star.  It had never occurred to her to ask for him.  When she had been hurt on the farm, or even at school, there were no spare hands to look after her beyond her mother putting her head in now and then.  Getting her some soup, brushing her hair back, if there was time.  Asking for more was a waste of air.

That her proud king maybe wanted her to need him was humbling.

And thrilling.

“Say it,” he whispered, leaning close, his cold making her lips sting.

“Loki,” she whispered back.

He kissed her, and for a moment Nora thought that while the poison had not killed her, the radiant, furious cold of his body would stop her heart, but as he pulled her onto him, leaning back on the chaise so she sprawled across his chest she felt a great warmth starting from her center, spreading through her, even as his tongue teased at hers, as his mouth took gulps of her breath so she had to chase them into him.

“What?” she said, pulling back, stunned, looking to where the lines that he had traced over her body so long ago coiled and looped across her skin, glowing deep blue against her paleness, scrolling like an unreadable message written with a gloriously barbaric hand.

“ Prægefélagi ,” he said, using a Jotunn term she had never heard before.  “When a Jotunn marries he can choose to share his family’s marks, and his personal ones, with his new wife.  It means they are bonded to each other.  They are… irrevocably linked.  Because you are not Jotnar, while you will not be able to use my seidr or other powers, it means you are immune to my cold.”

Nora stood and rushed to the long, copper framed mirror near her bed.  

Still too small.

Still too pale.

But they were  _ beautiful _ .

“But, you made these weeks ago.”

“And you have thin, magick-less flesh.  It took forever to heal and set.  It has been very difficult to be patient.”

Nora snorted.  There were mountains that could learn lessons in patience from Loki.

She turned and shrugged out of her robe.  “Loki,” she said, holding out her arms.

“I should not,” he said, rising, removing his own garments as he walked towards her.  His black suede coat draped over the back of the chaise.  “You are still weak,” his gloves landed on a table. “I simply came because I could no longer bear to not,” his silken caftan fluttered to the ground.  He stood before her, his lean torso corded with muscles that were slightly tense, as if ready for flight.  The long angle of his hips, where his leather trews hung loosely, made Nora want to draw her tongue over the marks that covered them.

That now she matched.

“But I will,” he said, teasing her by not kissing her mouth, not kissing her jaw, not kissing her chin, or her neck or her shoulder, but simply tracing just above them with his lips.

With a lunge and moan, Nora threw herself against him, whimpering at the deeply sensitive contact where their marks met and matched.

Loki turned her so they faced the mirror.  “Watch,” he said, as he slipped his hands over her body.  Everywhere he touched the glow grew brighter.  When he wrapped one long leg around her ankle, the contact of the marks made her arch against him.  It felt as if he was brushing between her legs, but everywhere…

When he did touch her there she keened and clawed at the nothingness before her, longing to wrap him in her arms as well.  For a moment she saw a thoughtful look in his eyes, but then he murmured, “One surprise at a time,” and drew her to kneeling, still behind her, his fingers deep in her, stretching and toying.  Teasing at her most responsive places but not satisfying any of them. Needing to stretch, to feel the pull of her skin on his, to feel the life spreading back within her, Nora reach up and behind, wrapping her wrist about Loki horns, her fingers tightening around the tips.

“Please...”

“Say it…” his mouth asked her skin.

“Please, Loki,” she tried not to beg, but she begged.

“ _ Dýrgripur, _ ” he moaned back to her, as distracted, as taken as she had ever heard him.  As gently as he could manage while shaking, he lifted her carefully so she hovered above him.  

“Put me in you.”

Nora reached between her legs and felt his cock, swollen and ridged, pressed to his stomach.  Carefully, as he made noises of pain, she untied his trews and then put him to her opening. He tenderly slid her down his heavy length, her body shaking, no longer used to him, the new position taking him deep enough that he had to stop within her.

It was a shock and Nora wanted to stay like that for the rest of her life, the marks on their bodies rubbing together, with all of the pleasure possible, his fingers rubbing the sensitive place at the top of her sex, his hips urging hers to move, and the not quite pain where he had met the last resistance of her body keeping her from coming to her peak.

Finally, loose and exhausted, Loki leaned back, pulling her along, rubbing deeply, causing a gush of pleasure to rush through her body, drenching both of them.  He bit into her, matching the mark on her shoulder with his teeth, making her convulse again as a new wave of wild need and then satisfaction over took them both this time.

Still in her, Loki stretched them both out on the heavy layers of carpets, too tired to reach her bed, while close enough to pull a fur from it to wrap them in.

  
  
  
  



	12. There is No Happiness So Great It Cannot be Stolen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything changes.

Nora stared at her husband.

No.

She stared at the king.  

She was still holding the box.  Her knuckles ached as the wood groaned slightly under the tightness of her grip.

He made a dismissive gesture, shaking his head.  He took a seat at his desk and waved a hand as if he could clear the very air of her words, so unimportant were they.  He obviously did not have time for her feelings.  “Now if you would be so good as to put that back where you found it and then hasten along to bed.  I shall be with you directly.”

Then, not waiting to see if she would obey, he returned to his work.

For a moment Nora considered throwing it at him, but decided that might be dangerous.  Críost only knew what he might do to her.  Instead she set the box carefully down beside the papers the king was reading and walked to the bedchamber.  

Her body felt like it was filled with glass.  All of it broken.

 

Three months earlier - 

The next few weeks rushed past Nora like a runaway horse.  Or maybe a stampede of them, threatening to turn her into a tiny splat.

As she had convalesced  - too slowly her liking, too quickly for Loki’s - the king had explained to her that for some time he had been considering breaking Midgard away from the Empire.  “We feed them, we give them a place to train untried troops who need to acclimate to warmer worlds, we give them dumping ground for their unwanted,” here he smiled ruefully, making a graceful, swooping gesture with his right hand towards his chest, while reaching out with his other to take her hand before she could protest, “and unneeded young.  And in return they give so little.  They pull back the edge of the curtain to rest of the universe, enough to let a little light come in but not enough to see anything, give grudging military protection from other realms to a world that probably would not require it should the Empire not have bases here.  And, of course, me.”

Nora lifted the hand she held and kissed the back of his fingers, “Because your father is too stupid to know how amazing you are.  They don’t deserve you.”

For a moment he looked away, as if he couldn’t look her in the eye.  Nora knew that for all that Loki liked to pretend his cold blood meant he had a cold heart, she had learned better.  If anything it was the opposite, and there were times when they were together that he seemed to find his own feelings unbearable, her’s almost as bad.

He squeezed her fingers and then stood, pacing a bit as he spoke while she lay on the chaise.  “The people of Midgard, the humans certainly but even some of those Jotun who have lived here for generations were horrified by what happened to you.  Their queen.  They call you that, did you know?  Not the Queen of Midgard, but the Midgardian Queen.  It sounds to be the same thing, but it is not.  Whoever caused it, the Empire is being blamed.  You have spoken for your people, and now they speak for you.”

It was true.  There were anti-Imperial protests, far larger and more public ones than had been seen in decades, all over the world.  The largest were naturally in Olmeca and especially around Shikaawa, but not only there.  Even the younger members of the privileged in the Sudan and the  Pitjantjatjara from the Southern continent were marching, to the horror of most, but not all, of their elders.  Speeches were made calling on the Emperor to investigate Nora’s poisoning, for him issue an official statement condemning the criminals responsible and offering his support to his daughter-in-law.

Laufey was unsurprisingly silent.

Loki, more surprisingly, allowed them.

“But, won’t this cause more trouble?  I-, if anyone gets hurt because of me I’ll-,” Nora fretted.  She had grown up in a peaceful time, but even then Jotunn on human violence was not just accepted but was treated as commonplace.   

Loki walked over, looking down at her fondly as she leaned her cheek against his leather-clad hip, “No,  _ álfadrottning,  _ I promise that no one will be hurt.  Now it is my turn to speak for us all.”

 

Loki watched with some concern as Nora entered the council chamber for the first time since her recovery last month, walking slowly and carefully.  Even though she was mostly healed from the poison itself, she was still quite weak, often falling asleep throughout the day.  And her stomach was still too tender to eat much at any time, which made recovering her strength an even slower process.  It was quietly distressing to him that things had not progressed as quickly as he had anticipated with her healing.

But she had insisted that she had to come with him to the privy council meeting today.  To show her support.

He wished he could physically support her right now, wanting to stand and cross the room, and lead her to her seat at the far end of the table.  Doing so however, would undermine her before the rest of the council, who were mostly resigned to her significance but not all.

Which was why it was a surprise when Barren of all people left his seat to offer the queen his arm.  It was not by its nature an unwelcome surprise, save that for Loki _ every _ surprise was an unwelcome one.  

Then he allowed himself a small, secret smile.  Every surprise, save the queen.

Nora looked at Barren’s proffered arm, frowning in annoyance, as if she wasn’t sure either what it was or what it was supposed to do.  Finally Theunis just took her hand and threaded it through the bend of his elbow and helped her to her seat.  All the while her new bodyguard, Itark, the largest female Jotunn Loki had ever seen, fresh from home and exiled as a punishment for her possibly seditious - or just irritating - father, hovered in the background.  

Her expression was the Jotnar ideal, empty of imagination, emotion, or intelligence, filled only with purpose.  Any purpose.  But Loki saw that her body language spoke volumes.  She was terrified of something happening to her tiny charge.

Perfect.

Once everyone had been seated, Loki folded his hands upon the teak table, his rings making a soft, pleasing click.  “Shall we begin?”

Lady Tye spoke, “Lord  Kyrhyn has not arrived yet.”

Loki’s aunt Geror, and Baroness Miliki, the two other Jotnar in the privy council exchanged predatory smiles when he answered, “Kyrhyn has been… detained.  In the Oubliette.”

There was a general stirring in the council.  The humans - Barren, Tye, and her sister Samiah - all quickly schooled themselves, but Loki knew their minds.  Barren and Kyrhyn had not gotten along, so he was pleased, but concerned the Queen who he had treated so… questionably would be taking the open seat.  Tye, who had often been allied with Kyrhyn was frightened, especially because of her mutual loathing with Geror.  Samiah was the most outwardly serene, but was no doubt making a list of possible replacements while mentally cross-referencing them with the existing members.  

“Going forward, until such time as we find a suitable replacement,” he waved a hand and a sheaf of papers appeared before each member of the council, “we will be discussing a matter that has long been near and dear to my heart.”  He rose and walked to the far end of the table, taking Nora’s hand and kissing it, “More so after the recent, cowardly attack on my queen.”

Each council member read the header - A Prospectus on the Dissolution of Imperial Rule Over Midgard and the Creation of a Separate, Independent Kingdom -  and there was a stunned silence on the part of everyone save his aunt, who said, “If I might appropriate a Midgardian gesture?” and then rose, slowly clapping.

 

Stiofan watched the screens in a dirty cafe where they wouldn’t chase him off, showing video of the Queen entering the feast hall on the King’s arm, walking more quickly than before but still looking rather frail and tired.  There was a faint glow of blue visible from under the wide sleeve of her houppelande-styled robe, proving the truth of the latest of the now endless stream of rumors coming out about the royal couple- that the king had honored her with  Prægefélagi  marks.  

Which coincided with the prevalent theory that, based on her symptoms, she had been poisoned with Eitr and that only the King sharing his marks with her had kept her alive long enough for some of his magic to save her.  

At least that was the theory the Queen’s father Mickey had bloviated about in a recent interview.  

Stiofan shook his head with a laugh, sipping wheat bran coffee, wishing he had added sugar but it was too much money for an elderly hobo.  The King had done a very thorough job finding ways to get his message out without saying a word himself, even using the Queen’s family, who he probably found personally distasteful.  Hel, Stiof found them distasteful, but their country accents and too new, too well pressed clothing gave them an aura of earnestness.  They seemed like they really believed what they were saying about their “sweet little girl” was true.

And by his estimation, about half of it was.

Sadly, it was the half that was going to ruin a life.

Наталия came in to the cafe, bought a paper cup of rice water, and came to lean on the counter next to him, turned away from the screens so she could look at the street.  “Well?  The protests are getting out of control in some areas.  Only the King’s personal guard showing up stopped the situation at the arms depot in Germania from turning into a bloodbath.  The whole world is ready to explode.  And it isn’t us inciting,” she said with a significant lift of an eyebrow.  “Not this time, anyway.”

“He’s picked up his timeline.  I’m guessing because he sees the girl as an opportunity as well,” he said.  “Means we have to do the same.”

“I’ll get word to  _ Mom _ ,” she said, drawling the last word, starting to walk away, then stopping.  “Should we tell her?  The girl,” she gestured towards the screen where Queen Nora was talking to a group of Lędzianie saltminers, deep in their gorgeously carved pit.  The alabaster walls had been carved into a ballroom, and her brilliant green gown glowed as they listened to her thank them for their work and their welcome.   Making a bad joke.  Blushing as they laughed anyway, telling them to stop.

In an accent that sounded like one of their wives, their sisters, their daughters.  

They loved her.

All because she was just like them, except lucky.  And she didn’t pretend any differently.

Then she talked about the King, and her smile broke Stiof’s old man’s heart.

“No, not… just-”

Before he could finish, a Flash message from the King came on and changed everything.

 

Everyone remembered Declaration Day.

Where they were.  What they were doing.  Who they were with and everything else about the moment that every public screen, every radio service station for isolated areas played the Royal fanfare.  

The King sat on the throne, dressed in the severest black alleviated only by the plain gold chain draped between his horns and the glimmer of an emerald wedding ring on his finger - a silent, but noticed by all gesture he had made after the Queen’s recovery.  His hair was unadorned and unbraided.  

The Queen stood next to the throne, looking healthier and stronger than she had since the poisoning.  She also wore black, the sleeveless, scoop-necked gown showing enough of her to confirm the stories about the King’s markings on her.  She wore a matching wedding ring and a traditional Jotunn bride’s collar, which none of Loki’s queens had ever been gifted with.

They both wore their crowns, which was unusual, as they were generally reserved for the most formal occasions.

When the King spoke, his dark voice rolled over the earth, leaving a new world in its wake, “My dear, fellow Midgardians, human and Jotunn alike, I ask your patience as I disrupt your day.  Perhaps you are working, in a factory, in the fields, in your schoolrooms and are pleased to take a moment from your labors.  Perhaps it is late at night where you are and are - silently - cursing me for interrupting your much needed sleep.  So that you can go to work, in the factories, in the fields, if you are fortunate in the schoolrooms where you spend your days for the great glory of the Jotunn Empire.  Who take from us, for yes, I do myself the honor of counting myself amongst you, and take and take more.

“Sometimes resources, always the hours of the too brief hours of our human brothers, and often the lives of our Jotunn sisters in my father’s ever more pointless wars.  All with no proper representation in the chambers of power.

“I, for too long, have served this needlessly cruel agenda, holding myself apart from you, from the interests of this world, in the misguided hope that someday I might earn the esteem of my family and homeworld, not realizing that they were no longer family to me, and Jotunheim was no longer home.  No longer.”

At that moment, without looking, he took the Queen’s hand, “It took the near loss of the most important member of my true family to wake me from my dreams of the Empire.  Which is why, as of this moment I am declaring the independence of Midgard from the Jotunn… No, I declare the independence of Terra-”

Almost no one heard what he said next as a roar from millions and millions throats rose as the King spoke the most forbidden of all words in any human language.

Everyone was still again as he rose, removing his crown, and that of the Queen, placing them on pillows being held by Lady Samiah and Lady Geror.  “Your Queen and I have conferred and have come to the decision that we will put aside our crowns until such time as we can wear them again as symbols of our home and not of the power of the Empire.  

“These will be dark and trying days, but I have no doubt that the fierce will to survive that saved humanity from the Jotnar, and the love of their new world that exists amongst those Jotunn who have lived on this beautiful planet for generations will be more than enough to take us into a new age.

“Thank you.”

Then, as he started to bow his head slightly to indicate the end, the Queen stepped forward just a bit, “I, um, I know everyone is probably really scared, and really excited.  I am.  I don’t want us to go to war, but it’s like we’ve already been at war, but we haven’t done any of the fighting.  Just the dying, fast or slow, like Loki- sorry, like His Majesty said.  Anyway, I know we can do this.  If I can be a queen, then anything is possible.”

The King looked at her, briefly dumbstruck, and then kissed her, right there for all the world to see.

The world, in response, went a little mad.

 

That night, after spending exhausting hours poring over reports from all corners of the world, of workers walking out of factories, of personnel on military bases rising up and using the tanks, ships, and weapons that they maintained to capture and contain the small contingents of Jotunn soldiers, of shipments of food that were ready to be sent out being raided and redistributed, Loki finally insisted that Nora go rest.

Certain that she would not be able to sleep, exhaustion took her as soon as she crawled into his enormous bed.  

For some time dreams that threatened to turn into nightmares chased her.  Dreams of her brothers fighting in the streets of home.   Of friends from her brief time as school, Allada the painter, Denny who made numbers into music, Rosemarie who danced and danced, all running from noise and darkness.  And finally, herself standing alone on a high mountain, while far below the world turned into fire.

After a time the dreams became part of that stream of thoughts that you can never remember when you wake and she slept more firmly.  

Then something brushed her side, softly, making her stir and shift to her side.  It moved along her hip, firmer, lovely, and then coiled around her thigh, while her back rested against something that was cool and warm at once.  Something that her skin craved.

Long fingers gently lifted one of her legs so a long, ridged thigh could slip between it and the other, cradled against her sex. 

Two fingers together began to slowly circle and massage her clit, while in her half-sleep she rubbed and undulated against the thigh, and a wet, velvety mouth took her jaw, her neck, her shoulder, making Nora keen with need.  “What shall I do with you,  _ álfadrottning _ ?  Shall I leave you to sleep?  Or shall I fuck you? Do you want that?  For me to drive into you hard enough to wake you, to make you cry out and claw the air?  I have wanted you since I saw you tonight, my marks shining on your body, dressed like a Jotunn bride, but still always yourself.  I have thought of nothing but punishing you for how much you made me ache when I had so much to do.”

Nora tried to answer, but it was impossible.  

His fingers stopped, “If you do not answer I will assume you are too tired for me, and I will have to take myself away and take the lesser satisfaction of pleasuring myself whilst I watch you sleep.”  

She pushed herself against his hand, “No.  Now…” she managed to get out.

“Hmmmm… my eloquent queen…” he whispered into her ear, and then shifted, pulling her leg back hard over his hip so, his fingers plunging into her.  “My eloquent, so very wet queen,” he purred, sliding his cock back and forth so the ridges of it caught on her, until he was slick enough to enter her in a violent, gorgeous stab.

Nora, as he had said, cried out, her arms flailing as she was flung from her dreamy state into a madder pleasure.  Loki grabbed her hips, holding her in place as he quickly fucked her, the sound of their flesh slapping together was loud as he set an impossible pace for a human.   But the shock of the on and off contact of the marks on her back to his chest, her ass to his hip, their legs, jolted her from one near orgasm and then away and then back again, as she could only grasp the sheet, his hair where it trailed over her nipples, the air, trying not to be thrown off of the earth.

She could feel herself bruise.  She could feel herself struggling for breath.  She could hear herself making noises.  

“I-, I-,” she couldn’t get the words out.  Loki grabbed her hip and lifted her, turning them both so she was face down, his body covering hers, giving her no room to move as he pinned her wrists and continued his punishing pace, never quite giving her enough to put her over.  

“Please…”

“Queens do not beg,” he hissed in her ear, sounding almost cruel.  “Except to their Kings.  You will only ever beg me, and I will lay all creation at your feet.”

“I don’t want all of creation,” she managed to say, his hips pounding the words out of her, “I just want to come.”

“All that you desire, Nora...” she felt his snarl against the back of her neck, the delirious feelings that ran over her skin going haywire as his fang nicked the marking there and her cunt convulsed as ecstasy spiked from between her legs, spreading through her limbs like the roots and branches of a tree, leaving her shaking and devastated, glad to be hidden beneath his strength as he contracted around her, finishing with a wild cry.

 

The first wave of the war, if it could be called that, had gone almost exactly as Loki had planned.  The humans, and those Jotnar who considered Terra to be their home had been gleeful at the prospect of rising up.  Against the Jotunn soldiers, against the humans who sided with the status quo, taking every initial, strategic site that were needed to then take the remaining ones.

Just as his agents working in those communities were directed to influence them to do.

Meanwhile, his offworld allies moved at the same time, for all that they grumbled at the acceleration in their plans.  An attack on a supply line in Alfheim space.  Some peculiarities on Svartalfheim in the Dark Elven medical research facilities.  A total breakdown of communications from most of the worlds the Empire held in the outer realms.

Too many things at once to effectively take care of.  But Loki had known that Laufey would consider Midgard the least problem and would wait the longest to retaliate there.  He estimated it would be a month before the first troops arrived.   

If the Empire didn’t need Terra intact to keep up food production things would be different, but knowing that Laufey would only bomb the surface as a last act meant that Loki could afford to sit and let every bit of the harvest come in, and wait.

It was all going as it should.

Until the night that Nora came in carrying the box that contained the remnants of the Eitr poison she had been doused with, and the antidote.

He wondered how she had managed to open the secret compartment of his desk where he had hidden it.  She never ceased to astonish him.

  
  
  
  
  



	13. Pain is Simple.  Even a Child Can Understand it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened.

Everyone knew about the resistance.   Or, Nora reasoned, the Resistance was probably how they preferred to think of themselves.

They had existed in one form or another since the Jotunn had first come to Midgard.  First as a few survivors of the original invasion who had nothing to lose - no land, no families, no hope - who hid in the deserts and grasslands, picking at the edges of the Jotnar settlements and dying off quickly.  

The few who remained were clever, finding ways to recruit amongst the young and poor, which at that point in human history was nearly everyone, attacking less and sabotaging more.  The Jotunn governors, who were in and out of power quickly due to their inability to make the world productive, were never able to eliminate them.  They had too much support.  Even the most frightened humans would offer some assistance.  A hiding place.  A little food.  Some information.

Under Loki’s rule the movement had withered on the vine.  It was only now, knowing him and thinking about it that Nora saw how he did it.  

He ignored them.  

Publicly at any rate.  There was no major movements against them during his reign.  What attacks there were on his forces were repelled but the survivors were not pursued.   From time to time there would be a quiet rumor that an important leader or saboteur had been captured - but never tortured, never executed, never actually acknowledged.   When they staged a major action there was no overt retaliation and the king publicly expressed grief at the loss of life.  

There were no martyrs.  Their actions were treated as unimportant annoyances and nothing more.  

The young and angry, hoping to die gloriously and be remembered as part of a great cause stopped joining.  As a little money and a lot of peace settled over the world parents kept their children closer to home to work, to get what little education was available.  To live.

Eventually the Resistance shifted and changed.  What little of it remained, and at some points it was only one man, was now interested in upholding human interests  - feeding the poor, seeing that there was some recourse for families who lost their land and children to the Empire, sometimes offering medical aid - in as far as they could.  They were limited by their tiny size and few resources, but they did what they could.

Only the most elite humans did not see them as heroes.  

Especially the man who had reshaped their vision and had acted alone when needed for so many years.   Stíofán Clulann was as much a creature of myth as the king himself had been before Nora had married him. 

He was also very tiny, Nora’s own size, and so very old.  He looked to be the oldest man she had ever seen.  His hair was white tinged with yellow, and his skin was crumpled and dry.  And painfully thin, so much so that the grey uniform of the lowest tier of servants at the Castle hung from his shoulders like from a hanger, as if empty.  The massive hallway, leading to a currently unused wing of the Castle, dwarfed both of them, and the deep hollows of his eyes spoke of exhaustion and perhaps illness.

That said, the sight of him terrified her.  For him.

He had lived so long and fought so hard and now he was going to die in the home of his enemy because he wanted to talk to her.

And tell her lies.

“Your Majesty, I came myself because I knew that you wouldn’t want to believe it.  Who would?  And because I couldn’t make anyone else do this.”

“How did you even get here?”

“This isn’t my first time in the Castle, Majesty,” he said, “of course before I was below it,” he added ruefully. 

She stood staring at him for a long time, “Call me Nora.  Why would I believe you?”

“Because I have no reason to lie to you.  Or come here at all if it isn’t true.”

“But why would he -.  He loves me,” she said, unable to finish her thought.

“I think that’s true, Nora.  Everything I have seen, and heard from my other sources says that he loves you.  Which makes it worse.  If he could do something like this to someone he loves then what is he capable of doing to the rest of us?  But he’s given you power by marking you.  There are things that you can do now that only he was able to do before.  Places in this very mountain that now you can access, including the Oubliette.”

She was cold.  It had been weeks since she had been cold.  

“So you come here and lie to me because you think I’ll help you!  Because you want me to free someone-”

“Yes, I do.  I want to use you.  I’m no different than he is.  Except I’ll tell you the truth.  He’s the only creature on this planet who could even obtain Eitr, and he happened to have the antidote on hand?  Why?  Because he thought he might poison himself?”  

“He could have that … Eitr stuff for any reason.  He’s a powerful magician and he could be using it for anything.”

“And the messages he sent to his off-planet allies while you were dying, that he had found a way to ensure the humans would rise up?”

“How would you even know that?”

He scratched the back of his neck, “I can’t tell you, but let’s just say that your husband and I have some mutual friends and they haven’t decided which of us to back yet.  If you don’t believe that your husband did it then go look in his desk.  There’s a compartment under the right side.  You have to take out the bottom drawer.  Your markings will let you open it.  And then ask him.  

“He has what he wants now, so I don’t think he’ll lie to you.  Hell, from what little I understand about that bond between the two of you, he might not even be able to.”

“No, I trust him,” Nora wrapped the little shawl that Samiah had laid out for her today tightly around her shoulders.  It was made of traditional Dinka cloth and had been a peace offering from Lady Tye.

“Trust is good.  I believe in trust, but knowledge is better than faith in this world.  I’ll stay here, right here, and if I am lying, if you believe him and he’s hurt by your accusations you can give me to him as a peace offering.”

She stayed still for a moment.  

It wasn’t true.  It wasn’t true.  And now she held the life of a hero in her hands.  

And the fate of her marriage.  Because would Loki be able to forgive her for not trusting him?  

Not answering him, she turned and walked away, out of the empty hallway.

 

The box was small and carved with flowers. It had been exactly where  Stíofán had said it would be.  She hadn’t even needed to find an opening for the compartment.  The shadow of her hand over it made it click quietly open. 

Inside of it were a tiny bottle, half full of violet-colored powder that she remembered the doctor who had cared for her mixing with water for her to drink, and a ball of sticky, reddish something or other that looked like clay.  It was perfectly formed save for one spot on top where it looked like it had been pricked with a needle.   It smelled of -.

Nora didn’t know what the smell was, it was neither pleasant nor bad.  It was entirely alien but also familiar, and it made her gag, hard, her stomach cramping with pain.  She slammed the lid closed.  And remembered.

The morning she had been poisoned the tea smelled different than when she’d had it before.  She hadn’t thought much of it, Loki had told her that he could use the magic on just about any liquid, and the only thing that it meant to her was she would be with him that night.

Maybe even earlier, if she could lure him away from work for a time.

Now she knew that she had never been destined for his bed that day.  Her mind was foggy and swollen.  Her whole body hurt, like after a day of cleaning the barn, when she could barely drag herself to bed, to sick with exhaustion to even eat.

“Do not touch anything within that box.”  Loki’s voice was tense.  If she didn’t know him Nora would almost think he was afraid.  Instead she closed the lid, sliding the small hook into place.  “You haven’t already, have you?”

“No.”

He walked over to her, his hand out, “Give it to me.  How did you find it?”

Nora stepped back from him, shaking her head, trying to make her eyes focus.  Her head felt tight, and her vision was dark around the edges.  For a moment she didn’t recognise him.  All she could see was a tall, dark shape moving towards her, terrifying, alien,  demanding something from her.  

She was still holding the box.  Her knuckles ached as the wood groaned slightly under the tightness of her grip.

“Were you the one who poisoned me?”

As soon as she said the words her vision cleared.  The terrible pressure that had been building in her stopped and everything was hollow because before he spoke she knew.  

“I am,” he answered, stepping closer.  She edged along the wall until she could move away again, and this time he let her.  His eyes were narrow, faint slits the color of blood, “How did you know where to look for that.”

Nora shook her head.  “I won’t tell you.  No matter what you do to me.”

He rolled his eyes, snorting, “Do not be so dramatic, my little Queen.  Keep your secret for now, I’ll find it when I have more time.  Right now I have more important matters.”

Without thinking about it, she hugged the box to her chest.  Her heart was racing like a rabbits when a wolf was near,  “I thought you loved me.”

It seemed that he might have moved towards her again, that his cool, annoyed expression might soften, but then Nora realized that was just a wish on her part.   Instead he stepped farther away from her, “You were the one who said I did.  You insisted on it right in this very room.”

“So you don’t.  You can’t.”  

“And now you insist on the contrary.  Make up your mind,  _ álfadrottning.” _

At that moment Nora hated Loki. 

She hated herself for being the Queen of Fools.

She hated them both enough to open the box and eat the whole ball of poison and die at his feet.

But she didn’t hate everything.  She still loved the world, and music, and eating good food, and the friends she never saw, and even her family, so she didn’t. 

“Did it ever occur to you to tell me your plan?  That maybe just making me-”

“Nora, you are a terrible liar.  You are also lacking any discretion, but I would council you to find that skill now.”

“I suppose that if you had killed me that would have worked, too.  Just put me in a gingham dress, put some straw in my hair and say, ‘Look how afraid and full of hate my enemies are, to kill this poor little farm girl.’  You could have frozen me solid and laid me out and let people come to see the dead peasant.  You’d have had an army in  _ days _ .”

“I would have dressed you like a queen and then would h-” for a moment she thought he was going to lunge for her, the fury on his face was terrifying and she shied away.  He marshalled himself as she had seen him do so many times before.  

Behind bland passivity he viewed her.

“It is not as if you were in particular danger. I would expect you should be relieved that no one was making a legitimate attempt on your life.”  He took a seat at his desk and waved a hand as if he could clear the very air of her words, so unimportant were they.  He obviously did not have time for her feelings.  “Now if you would be so good as put that back where you found it and then hasten along to bed.  I shall be with you directly.”

Then, not waiting to see if she would obey, he returned to his work, signing papers that had been left there for him by Ceorl.

For a moment Nora considered throwing it at him, but decided that might be dangerous.  Críost only knew what he might do to her if she should act out against him.  Instead she set the box carefully beside the papers the King was reading and walked to the bedchamber.  

 

When Loki had been a child in his father’s court he had a place that he would go to when he was frightened.  It had not been a hiding place, for no one ever looked for him.  Rather, it was just somewhere he would go for his body to be as alone as his spirit was.  Just an old, empty room that overlooked one of the endless fjords that surrounded the Redoubt.  The floor was covered with dust that he had dragged his feet through.

He had run there time and again.  When his mother looked at him as if she still could not understand what he was.  When he took a beating at the hands of those who were supposed to ‘teach’ him to fight.  When he saw other children playing.

The last time he went there was the day of his first exile, when he was to be sent to Asgard to be raised with the All-Father’s heir for a time.  He knew that his father expected he would be killed there, most likely by the already infamously belligerent prince, who had once declared that he would be willing to kill every Jotunn with his bare hands.  

It would give Laufey an excuse to break the treaty between the two Realms and rid him of his faulty heir.   It was a good plan.  One that he himself would come up with.  

Loki had walked out of that room and sealed the door behind him with a bit of the seider, making it invisible.  He had been certain he would die at the hands of the Aesir and be easily forgotten.  All he had thought was that if no one found that room and swept the floor than at least his footprints in the dust would show that he had once lived.

It occurred to him, watching Nora walk away, that he had not left that room that day.  That he had secretly lived within it even whilst he travelled to Asgard, to Alfheim, to Svartalvheim, and to Realms much farther afield.  Even here, in his own castle he has been sitting alone in the dust.

Until Nora had broken his magic, pushing the door open just enough to slip her tiny form in, sat down beside him, not caring if she got herself dirty.  She had leaned on his shoulder and sighed, pleased just to be with him.   

So he had let her stay like that until she was truly comfortable, until he was truly comfortable, and then he had stabbed her.   Because somehow he had convinced himself that in the long run it would be for the best.  That freedom for himself would mean freedom for her.  Freedom for her people.  That part of his brain that had always played ahead, that felt nothing and cared for nothing, that little bit of the self that he had made to protect the rest of him, had always had the loudest of the voices within.

After all, he had studied poisons amongst the Dark Elf kind.  And, as with every court he was exiled to by his family, he had found a way to master their secrets and surpass them.

All he needed was to make her sick, and then make her well.  She would be well, after all.  He knew what he was doing.  He would give her so little of the Eitr…  And she had his marks, though she knew it not.  Jotunns, having evolved in a wasteland, could eat nearly anything and survive it and now she shared some of that heritage.

And then, when Nora was healed and back at his side, the world would fall into their laps.

After a war or three.

When he sent the tea, after being certain to use cups that would on later investigation be found to have been recently brought into the Castle, it had taken all of his discipline not to follow Ceorl and knock the pot from his hands.  In the privacy of his rooms he had raved and broken his hand driving it through stone, knowing that he could not stop what he started.

That it was as clever as it was wise.  That by making Nora a true queen and not just a puppet he was making her safer.

He had bitten through his tongue to not call his servant back.

It tore him in two.  

The King and Loki.

He had fought himself, destroying his rooms, rending his flesh, only stopping when he realised that if he should die there would be no one to care for her.  So he had composed himself, changed his clothing, and sat at his desk, waiting until word came that the queen was ill.

 

Nora had found that she could sleep.  Her body felt nothing, and she was dazed, so there was nothing to do but take off her slippers, curl into a ball on the chaise near the fire, and sleep.

When she woke, she was in bed with the King.  He had not undressed her or himself and had her pulled to his chest.  

She slipped away, knowing how to get up without disturbing him, and returned to the couch, this time staring at the cold fireplace until dawn when she could return to her rooms to bathe and change clothes.  And be the Queen for another day.

  
  
  



	14. What Is Done Cannot Be Undone.

 

When Loki woke without Nora in his bed or even in his rooms he calmly called for his man-servant, instructing him with what to lay out for him to wear that day, and that he should send for Her Majesty to join her husband for breakfast. 

Whilst bathing he went over his schedule.  

He had any number of meetings with his newly appointed military leaders on how to organise the heretofore random actions against the Jotunn forces.  The last hold-out locations were in areas that were the most inhospitable to humans - the Antarctic and, sadly the Chukchi Peninsula, which was practically next door.    

If it came to it, he would just gather most of his bodyguard and take the base at Chukchi.  They had ships there and they, along with those that had been captured elsewhere, would take time to be refitted for human use.  Thankfully Barren’s flying tanks were in production already. Loki had made certain they were being produced in human-only facilities so no one would have reported to Jotunheim how small their controls were.  And their seats.

After the meetings he would be recording a message to go out the next day thanking the combined peoples of Terra and hoping that a peaceful dissociation from the Empire was possible.  

He dressed in his simplest clothing, a pair of black suede leggings with a matching tunic and an Asgardian-style robe embroidered with silver knotwork, and braided his hair himself.  Looking in the mirror he dismissed any thought of embellishments for his horns. He wanted to look solemn. Serious. Both for the meetings with his advisors and for breakfast with his wife.

Hopefully Nora would interpret from his simplicity that his worry over her state of mind had kept him from his usual vanity.  In truth, Loki’s first instinct was to make himself as attractive as possible for her, but he was certain that showing a kind of humbleness would set a better tone for breakfast.

As usual Nora was waiting when he finished.  She was seated with her back to him - her back was very straight, her shoulders ridged, which was odd, as she was usually slumped over a book, absently feeding herself, by the time he joined her.

Ceorl had prepared their usual small table beside the balcony doors, the meal ready since he was often late, he did not like Nora to have to wait on him.  She had been hungry too many times already. There was fruit and bread, some kind of hot porridge with honey, and, unfortunately considering the night before, a samovar for tea.   

“My apologies for that,” he said, rounding the table to sit, “Ceorl, the queen and I would prefer coffee this morning.  In the meantime there should jui-”

Loki stopped, almost seated.  

Nora was not looking at him.   She stared out at the mountains, her brown eyes sunken and dry, with circles like unhealed bruises beneath them.  In her hands she held a twisted napkin that she twined and un-twined between her fingers. Her mouth was tight and white lipped and her whole body was like a fist.  “Nora?” he said softly.

She met his eyes.

He had been hoping for rage.  That Nora would storm and curse him, destroying everything in her path.  He longed for her to call him terrible things, allowing her to cleanse her system with clean fury and petty revenge.

He had been prepared for despair.  That she would be empty and broken.  That she would answer him in few words and would move like a sleepwalker.  That would allow him to gently find a way to lead her back to him.

He had been resigned to the possibility of nothingness.  That Nora would be much herself, if less affectionate for a time, having, as the reasonable creature he knew her to be, worked out for herself that while his actions were regrettable, that in the long run they were wise and that the years of power and safety that lay ahead of them were worth it.  That would allow him to make her a larger part of his plans, to let her find her own power.

But he had not been prepared for fear.

Nora, his queen, his  _ fjársjóður,  _ his bold, brave, irreplaceable  _ álfadrottning _ , was terrified of him.

They waited in silence for Ceorl to replace the tea urn with one of coffee.  Loki poured cups for both of them. “Thank you, Sire,” she said, quietly, politely, not moving.  

It took a great deal of effort not to correct her, not to order or to beg that she call him Loki.

Perhaps she would feel more herself after eating.  She’d obviously had a long night running over and over the same ground in her mind, conflating things that had no connections, making herself sick, tangling her thoughts into unpickable knots.  He was a veteran of such nights and knew how the morning after felt worse than any hangover.

The only thing he could think to do was to act as he would on any other morning.

He filled their plates as well, “Please do not be so formal, Nora.  Now, today I would like you to attend the two meetings with our military advisors.”  

For what seemed like fprever he found himself prattling on like an idiot, telling her his plans, what he would like her to do, the timeline he had projected, what he hoped for after the end of Terra’s connection to the Empire.  Projects that had long been put aside, such as testing in schools for magical potential amongst the human children - Jotunns rarely had such power and most became shaman or shamankas rather than magicians - as well as finally being able to teach the higher sciences, might finally happen.  

After a time he noticed that Nora had not moved.  Not eaten. 

She looked at his face as he spoke and nodded politely from time to time, all the while looking like she might be ill.  Might faint. Might want to run.

When he reached across the table to take her plate, she reared back slightly.  Pretending he did not see her fear, he calmly placed her food in front of himself and a took a bite from each item, and then placed it back before her.  He likewise sipped her coffee.

“Please eat.”

Nora picked up a slice of apple and put it in her mouth.  For a moment she didn’t move but then she chewed carefully and for too long, until the fruit must have been liquified, and then finally swallowed.  She did the same thing with another and another, not looking at him, just staring out at the mountains. 

“Excuse me,” she said, standing quickly and running to the necessary room.  He could hear the sound of her being ill. She came back and stood by the table, not looking at him, “May I return to my room.  I would like to lay down for a while?”

Loki nodded.    

 

For days he longed for her.  

The fear in her eyes would haunt him until he died.  Maybe until it killed him. He was furious, but he did not know at who.  Normally having an object for his cold rage was his best distraction, but the uncomfortable feeling was that it might be at himself.

That she had every right to be afraid of him.

No.  She had to know that he would never have truly endangered her life.  She was merely going through something - humans were rather emotional and fragile, even the most brave and clever amongst them.  Her brilliant brain would bring her back to him and he could afford to wait.

Loki permitted Nora to sleep apart from him, knowing that she would not sleep at all if he were near.  It was easy enough to spread a rumor that she was still delicate and that he was keeping late hours that would adversely affect her health.

While the King attended meetings, made plans and pronouncements, Loki stayed in his rooms, waiting for the slightest sign that Nora was open to persuasion, to anything from him.  

She did not change.  

He waited for three days.

Fear and growing sense of something in her being annihilated was all that he saw.  

He had Ceorl bring him a bottle of ice wine from Jotunheim.  And then another.

 

The King came to her.  He had been drinking, though the only way she could tell was a slightly sibilant tone to his dark, cultured voice.

Nora had been pretending to read, just as she had been pretending to do everything the last few days.  Rather badly. Everyone had assumed that it was the stress of current events - even though that all seemed to be going well, she  _ did _ pay some attention to the reports.  Or that she was still not entirely recovered physically.

She had managed to eat a bit tonight for a change.  The loaf of fresh bread and pot of sharp, blue veined cheese had tempted her, as had a few grapes.  She had never quite gotten used to all of the fruit that could be had, especially in winter. It seemed like an insult to her past and all of the winters where she dreamt of apples to not eat at least a little.

It made no sense that someone so tall, with such high horns, could sneak up on her, but she had been a million miles away, enjoying a void she had recently found her brain where she thought about nothing.

But Loki was now standing behind her, his hand running down her throat, to her shoulder, and for a moment, unthinkingly, she leaned back against his hip and wanted to sigh.

“I refuse to let us go on like this, Nora,” he bent over and purred in her ear, nipping lightly as his touch glided down her arm, taking her hand.  

As their fingers twined together she jolted forward, afraid.

“No,” she said, pulling free and standing to face him.  The idea of being naked before him, of being open, of being helpless - as if she weren’t always so with someone who could kill her without thought or effort - made her shake with cold.  

Cold that she didn’t even feel anymore.

“Yes,” he said, closing the gap between them, taking her hand again, blowing on her fingertips, “I am going to debauch you, treasure,” the marks on her skin slowly lit, a line of icy heat starting with her hand and them leisurely working across her body, down her other arm, across her torso, peaking her nipples, delving between her legs, between her buttocks, where she could feel them pulsing and almost stroking at her.

Was that even possible?

Did it matter?

“I couldn’t do this if you didn’t want me,” Loki said, “your marks are yours, they only crave me when you do.”  He took the top of her heavily embroidered gown in hands and slowly ripped it down so he could push it off of her shoulders. 

Was that a lie?  And did  _ it _ matter?  Nora didn’t know.  She didn’t know anything except she was sick of how she felt.  She was scared all of the time, not knowing what he might do. She was sick of herself, and of how stupid she felt every day, every minute.  That all of those pitying looks and condescending words she had gotten since she had arrived were true. That she was just an ignorant peasant and all of the pretty dresses and nice words the king gave her wouldn’t change it.

For just a while she didn’t want to think anything, and only Loki could empty her like that.

“I am going to possess every piece of you,” he said, putting his mouth to her breast, circling her nipple delicately,  just brushing the flat of it back and forth. He traced over the marks that matched his and whispered magic. Her body trembled against him, her legs barely holding her up.  Loki sat on the chair she had left and drew her down, so his spread thighs held hers apart and her toes barely held her.

“You are so lovely, my  _ álfadrottning...”   _ he cooed, and she knew it was only his marks upon her that made him think that.

Nora’s head lolled back on her shoulders.  He took a fist of her hair and pulled her mouth to his.  She was afraid to kiss him. It was too much like the love he didn’t feel, and that she knew she always would.  Too much like the poison. She kissed him, her mouth open and wild, and two of his fingers went stroking into her cunt, finding everything that made her fall harder into him, moaning and grinding. 

Loki’s mouth tasted like something strong and full of earth and dark fruit.  A drink so strong that it could make her drunk just by licking it from his lips.

She wanted to be drunk and she kissed him, greedily chasing intoxication. 

His fingers seemed to grow in her, longer, finding something new, so tender and strange, so secret, she wanted to close her legs.  He spread his farther so only the painful pull in her hair and the too invasive hand that was now fucking her and taking too much, more than she had thought to give, held her in place.

Her body went weak, falling against him.  He licked her tongue, and then bit her neck, giving one last, firm thrust so she fell apart, her orgasm wiping her clean, a flood of liquid splattering the floor beneath her.

Some of it pooled in Loki’s hand.  She lay on his shoulder, panting and trying to focus,  “Open your mouth, treasure,” he told her. Pleased to understand his words, she did and he poured it between her lips and then drank it back out.

 

Later, Loki woke Nora, his tongue lapping her anus.  “What?’ She was sleepy, defenseless, looking over her shoulder.  In that unaware, open moment she looked at him without fear, only an adorable confusion, a blushing arousal.

Her skin turned the shade of her pretty nipples and those were practically red from his bites.

Delightful.  Sweet. Unique.  

Later, when he took her there, after gently easing the way with magic -  _ seidir _ and ointments that heated and aroused and that he spread across the pinkest parts within and without her and then slicked along every line he had traced over her, massaging it onto her clit so she was mindless fire when he breached her last virgin part.

He refused to allow himself his release.  As much as he rejected much of his heritage, Loki found himself contemplating the traditional Jotunn marriage ceremony that he had never committed to before and decided that tonight would be Night One of it.

“I will let you sleep alone tonight, but after this you will be in my bed every night,” he said to her as she started to fall asleep.  “I know you think that you will resist me, but we both know that you will always move towards me willingly.”

 

After the king left, after she was certain he had gone far away, she sobbed herself sick again.  

Once she had rinsed her mouth, Nora sat on the floor, leaning on one hip when a dull ache lanced through her from that last... thing he had done and stared at herself in the mirror, not sure who she was looking at.

Her nipples were still peaked and deep pink.  There were rapidly fading bruises on her hips where the king had held her, and similar, redder marks on her shoulders and neck.  Because of the Prægefélagi scrolled over her skin, which were still faintly blue in the aftermath of her weakness, she healed very quickly now.  

Her body healed quickly, but the rest of her was just growing worse.  Like she had a wasting sickness that was eating away at her mind. 

It was only a matter of time until she caved in on herself.

Or until she ran to the king, as he predicted she would.

It was a special, very refined and lonely hell to want to run for comfort to the person who has hurt you.

She wouldn’t run to him.  She couldn’t bear the look of concern and victory that would be in his eyes.

Nora reached for the bread knife on the platter of her forgotten dinner.

 

Stíofán was surprised by the change in the queen’s appearance in just a few days.  She had clearly lost even more weight than she had just from the poisoning, she looked pale and jumpy, and her hair, which had been cut off roughly so it was only a few inches long all around looked dirty.  Under her long, velvet cloak he could see a kitchen uniform much like his own.

“Who am I looking for?”

“Your Majesty, I-”

She raised a hand to stop him, “Don’t.  I’m no more a queen today than I was the day I was born.  Just tell me who I’m looking for and where they should meet with me.”

“His name is Kalmus Weide.  He was a scientist of sorts, worked with Barren’s for your… for the King, once upon a time.  He’ll be in the lowest point behind the heaviest door. If you take that lift down as far as it will go you will be on the top layer of the Oubliette.  After than it spirals downwards. Weide will be at the end of the line. We can meet up in the supply bay for the kitchens.”

Nora gave him a small nod and then passed her hand over the control panel for the elevator.  The King’s marks that were visible - on her wrist, the back of her hand, her neck - flared briefly to life, a blue light tendraling out to touch the panel, causing the door to slide open.

She turned to face him, her face serene, her eyes empty, her bearing regal.

 

By the time Nora reached the farthest point of the Oubliette she was certain that she would be coming out on the other side of the world.  The last three doors were not the fancy, technological marvels of the other cells. These were cruder, made of iron. The one that capped the hallway was not only heavily barred, but had ice around the edges of it, like frost on a window.  

The King had shown her that before.  The door to his workroom was similarly encircled.  If anyone should try to enter it the ice would spread and thicken until it created a second door, this one of ice six inches thick and harder than stone.

She touched the simple handle and the door opened easily to her.

The room within was a surprise, and she blinked a bit.  It was bright and warmer than anywhere in the Oubliette had been so far.  There was a table with a chair, a bed with a quilt, and a rug made of green and purple rags on the floor.  There were stacks of books along the back wall, and writing instruments on the table.

On the bed a man, just a man, with black curly hair, olive skin, and a pleasant if wary face was wearing spectacles and reading and making notes in another book.

“Are you Kalmus Weide?” she asked.

He stood, pulling the prisoner’s uniform he wore straight, “Yes, I am.  Your Majesty.”

“How did you know?”  Not that there had ever been, but today there was nothing queenly about her.

“You’d be surprised at how much gossip we get down here.  Even me.”

Nora didn’t really care. “ Stíofán Clulann is waiting for you in the dock.  Can you find your own way?” She asked, tossing him the change of uniform.  

He looked like he wanted to ask a thousand questions and was stopping himself, “Yes, I know my way around.”

“Of course you do.”  Apparently she was the only person alive who couldn’t find their way around the Castle blindfolded.  “Change quickly, I have to walk you out or everything is going to slam shut behind me.”

The trip out was quicker than the trip in or, like most times when going over the same ground, just seemed that way.  Weide was a quiet man. Nora liked that. Lately she hated the sound of other voices, the one in her head, the one that hated herself, was too loud already.

When they reached the lowest surface level of the Castle, Nora told him where to meet Stíofán.  He looked at her expectantly, but she just motioned for him to go on. 

The old dock, from when the Castle had first been carved from the mountain was still in use, if not as busy as the larger one that had been built higher up that was safer to use.  The few guards that were there paid her little mind. She appeared to be just another boy from the kitchens. There was a human-sized exit next to the massive entrance for cargo. 

No one seemed to notice or care when she walked out into the cold.

 

Stíofán exchanged a quick hug with Kalmus, “How are you… feeling?”

“Calm.  And happier than I thought I would.  I didn’t mind it down there that much.  Where’s Barrens?”

“He’s staying for now.  Where’s Nora?”

“Who?”

“The Queen.”

Kalmus shook his head, “I don’t know.”

 

Two weeks l ater -

The old woman had gone mushroom hunting in the great forest at dawn, taking her breakfast with her.

Spring was now truly with them and she’d had good luck with boletes and a batch of honey mushrooms and after a few hours decided to head home.  She would make soup for lunch and fry some at dinner to serve with the last of the elk she had butchered the month before.

When she arrived back at her cabin she knew something was amiss, even though the little house itself looked as snug and comfortable as ever.

Inside, she found in her neat little kitchen a plum pit and an empty mug that had been washed and left to dry on a tea-towel next to her cistern.  Wrapped around them was a black pearl necklace, clearly meant as payment.

Bah!  What would she do with a necklace?  That had been the last plum in her greenhouse and she had planned to eat it when she returned from the forest.  She slipped it into her pocket anyway. It was pretty.

In the parlour, a girl with badly shorn hair had laid down near her fire-grate and fallen asleep.  She was very, very thin, and small, nearly as small as the old woman herself. And dirty, there was even a bit of blood on her lips from where they had cracked, so dry were they.  Her boots had been scrupulously scraped clean however, before entering the cabin.

Baba Yaga took a stick from her umbrella stand, made of pine and stained black, and struck the girl on the soles of those boots.

“Wake up, little thief!”  

  
  



	15. Some have been thought brave because they didn't have the courage to run away.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora, back on a farm.

Three months later…

Goats were way more trouble than pigs.

That was the first thing Nora learned while living with Baba Yaga.

Both animals had adorable, charming young, and split hooves, but all similarities ended there.  Pigs were bigger, stronger, smarter, but they were also genial as a rule, their intelligence allowing them see that you were trying to help them - at least until it was time to make bacon.  

Goats were ill-tempered, stubborn, and had heads made of stone.  

Nora had decided she didn’t mind the last quality, especially in the case of the head buck, Chernaya, who was black, shaggy, and constantly escaping.  At least once a week for the last few months she had followed him through the broken fence and into the woods to try and herd him back towards the cottage.  And more than once she had broken a log over his massive, curved horns while he looked at her with those uncanny eyes. 

He would shake his head, wuffing, and half-charge over and over, like he was laughing at her.  Like he liked it. After Chernaya got bored, he would trot back to his harem of nanny goats. Occasionally looking over his shoulder to be certain she was keeping up.

Goats were way more trouble than pigs.  That was the first thing she learned, since the goats were all Baba Yaga would let her help with until she was convinced that Nora wasn’t just some spoiled pet from the Castle.  That she really was a farm girl. The old witch neither knew nor cared who she was or why she was there, just that she was a stray and had no people nearby.

She learned that if she cried at night she would have to sleep outside.  Since Baba Yaga didn’t feel the cold, the old woman thought nothing of using her power to physically throw Nora out of the cottage for keeping her up.

She learned to make goats’ milk cheese and soap.

She learned to put preserves in her tea, when she could bear to drink tea again.

She learned that sometimes she came back from foraging to find the whole cabin turned around and that when she asked why, Baba Yaga shrugged and said, “Sometimes I like a change of view.”

She learned that living with an ancient witch who had an unsavory reputation involving what she was rumoured to eat from time to time in a hard winter, meant that when they did go to town people minded their own business.  And that if any of them knew who Nora was they kept their mouths shut.

She learned that working hard enough to sleep at night doesn’t mean you won’t have dreams that make you come awake screaming, sometimes in fear.  Sometimes for other, more embarrassing reasons. So she decided it was just easier to sleep outside all of the time… after she gave the shed a good spring cleaning, working muscles that had grown slack with indolence and illness.  The day she got it clean enough was the first night she slept through the dreams.

She learned that sometimes, you cannot get over your pain.  That you sometimes wander away from everything and almost get eaten by a tiger one time and a brown bear another because you’re lonely and hate yourself for it and you want what you should never want.  And you can never bring yourself to say his name. 

She learned, being chased by the tiger that she could run like the north wind blew.  She learned, escaping the bear, that she could climb like a squirrel.

She learned that if you act forlorn for too long Baba Yaga will make you some mushrooms for dinner putting one of the pretty red and white ones in the pan, and you will run into the forest and rage and wail.  And you’ll be surprised to know that you can be so wild that you’ll scare away everything that wants to eat you. That when the bear comes at you, you will bite it’s ear nearly off and you will love being covered in blood.  That you will fall on the ground twitching and frothing at the mouth and dream of your husband coming to you with the sweetest kisses, then stabbing you in the heart with one of his horns that will break off and he will leave it jutting from your chest.  

Then he will cry over you, tears made of snow that bury you alive.

After that night she learned that fly agaric left you with a worse hangover than vodka or moonshine.

She learned that if you couldn’t get over your pain you could learn to live with it.  That all of the world went on and on, no matter what happened to you. That even if you were the Queen of the Earth, the actual earth didn’t notice or care if your heart was broken.

She learned that if you asked very politely, and offered a year and a day of service in return, that Baba Yaga would spend three days and nights working in private in her cottage while you stayed outside, at the end of which she would hand you a pot of mud that stank of rotting flowers, old leather, and bad cheese.  That if you slathered it everywhere, waited until it dried, and then peeled if off, the marks on your skin would be gone.

She learned that it didn’t mean that for the next few weeks they didn’t itch terribly sometimes, and ache terribly at others.  Once, so badly that you ended up rolling around on the ground, groaning, but then it all stopped.

She learned to make poultices for burns and potions that Baba Yaga told her to “Mind your own business, little thief,” about, but that women came for secretly and late at night.  

She learned to make fire out of her thoughts that she could carry in her hand like water, and to purify water with a touch, and to make a tree bend to the earth so she could pick high fruit, and for the earth to open itself so she could bury the seeds from the fruit.  All without getting her fingers dirty. 

She did not learn about the war.  She knew it would find her eventually.  

 

On a bright morning, three months after she had woken up with the tiny, fierce witch hitting her with a stick and calling her a thief, Nora left the cottage, patted the side of Baba Yaga’s strange vehicle that she called Truck and was in some way alive, and went to the goat pen.

Chernaya was gone.

Nora didn’t even bother to curse any longer.  She should have known. The black beast had just placidly stared at her with his devil’s eyes the last few mornings, quietly chewing hay while she raked up shit to fertilize the garden.  

After replacing the wooden slats of the fence he had knocked over, she milked the nannys and made sure the babies were clean and had no odd sores or wounds from where they were trying out their little nub horns on each other.  Then she carried the milk back to the cottage. 

Baba Yaga was making kasha, (which Nora never wanted to see again) while laughing at herself for being so spoiled.  While she cooked, she wore a black pearl necklace with her apron, a bracelet that looked like a serpent biting its own tail that was studded with emeralds over her cardigan sleeve, and a diamond tiara on top of her flower printed babushka.  

They suited her more than they ever had Nora.

“Chernaya is in the woods again.  I’m not going after him this time.”

The old woman spun a bowl of porridge across the table at her, “Yes you are.  Eat first.”

“Why don’t you ever go?” Nora muttered, drizzling honey over the cereal before tucking in.  Sadly, it was still buckwheat. Now it was just sweet.

“I’ve chased that fucking goat for a hundred years- no!  Five hundred years. You want to stay here and eat, you chase him now.”

Nora dropped her spoon, “What do you mean five hundred-”

“Eat!”

The birch forest was still magical to Nora after all these months, the high, ghostly trees and the low, deep green undergrowth.  She knew that Chernaya was headed towards the stream. The last time she had found him there, bucking horns against a male musk deer.  The sight of it had scared her back out of the forest without the goat. What kind of deer had fangs? Baba Yaga had sent her back out into the night with a coal inside a  _ human skull _ on a stick, telling her not to come back without the goat.

Deers with fangs were less frightening after that.  

Chernaya would no doubt be going back for a rematch.

Not caring that it might alert him to her presence, she sang as she walked, a song that a Rus trader who had stayed at the cottage for a few days had taught her.  Apparently in the woods and mountains in the north, a few peoples had kept their languages and Nora loved singing something so forbidden.

Something so purely human.

_Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg_ __  
_Galdramaður festi meg festi meg_ __  
_Trøllabundin djúpt í míni sál í míni sál_ __  
_Í hjartanum logar brennandi bál brennandi bál_ __  
__  
_Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg_ __  
_Galdramaður festi meg festi meg_ __  
_Trøllabundin inn í hjartarót í hjartarót_ _  
___Eyga mítt festist har ið galdramaðurin stóð

 

Of course, she had no idea what any of it meant, but that was ok.  It was against the King’s first law and that alone made it beautiful for Nora.

Calling out for the goat was pointless.  She knew that unlike his harem and his babies, Chernaya was smart enough to know his name and rotten enough to ignore her even if he could hear her.  As she walked she gathered buckthorn and some tiny - perfectly safe - mushrooms, and some of the fine inner bark of the birch trees to make noodles with.

There was no hurry getting back, and at one point she sat herself down to drink raspberry flavored water from a stone bottle that she guessed was older than she was.  It was perfectly quiet, apart from the wind and the birds and the smaller creatures that she couldn’t see but could hear beneath the greenery underfoot. 

The noise started at a distance and grew closer.  First like creatures running, and suddenly Chernaya bolted out of the thicket, jumping over Nora with his flashing hooves snagging her hair but just missing her scalp.  He headed towards the cottage, looking back at her with a bleat that seemed to say, “Run, idiot girl,” before disappearing.

Sprawled out, she lifted her head just enough to see what looked like every creature in the forest that couldn’t fly or burrow running straight for her in pure panic.  Beyond them, farther than she could see, a mist was pursuing them.

No. 

Steam.  From frost.

Nora outran the goat.

She pounded on the cottage door, watching as the clearing that served as Baba Yaga’s land was flooded with animals.  Huge hares, grey wolves with pale eyes, squirrels, chipmunks, leopards, weasels, and deer, mice, snakes, and everything she didn’t know.

The old woman came out, a look of disgust on her face.  “I know, I know, little thief,” she looked over Nora’s shoulder, “and other freeloaders!  Jotunns. Only a few, but big ones.”

“Imperial forces!  Thank heaven!” She let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

Baba Yaga gave her a strange look, but didn’t say anything, stepping around her to walk down the stairs after whispering something faintly and in another language Nora didn’t know, directly into the wood of the cottage, which seemed to shift and stir a bit.

“Follow me,” she said, picking up a sickle that leaned on the shed as she went.  

The sound of the encroaching giants, that had been faint while in the now animal-crowded clearing, turned deafening the second they entered the tree line.  “Three of the them.”

“Do I need a weapon, too?” she asked, nodding toward the sickle.

“Can you use one?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

The forest had returned to winter, and the witch cursed - Nora didn’t need to understand the words to get the meaning: it was almost summer and this would make things harder - and fumed and stomped, and met the three giants.

They were taller than any Jotunns Nora had ever seen.  They must have come from the farthest north, where the eternal cold meant they grew larger.  They all had to be closer to twenty feet than ten, and in addition to the cold they were smashing trees with no compunction.  They wore traditional frost giant garb, loin cloths, boots, and arm guards, and each was armed with a great axe and an energy thrower, and a helmet mimicking the horns of the royal family.   

“Stop!”  Baba Yaga looked like a toddler halting them.

The leader, who wore a leather half-cape to designate his rank, put up a hand, and smirked down at her, “Greetings, hag.”  His accent was thick, and his voice was loud enough to shake the tops of the trees. “And who are you to stop His Imperial Majesty’s forces?”  He was clearly amused.

“My name is Baba Yaga, and you will address me as such, child,” she answered, her voice as loud as his.  Strangely, she seemed to Nora to be a bit taller. “Why are you in my forest?”

One of the other soldiers growled, while the third seemed bored.  “This forest, this planet, belongs to the Emperor Laufey, contrary to the declarations of his treasonous get, Loki the Betrayer.”

Unthinkingly, Nora stood out from the trees, starting to say something and then stopped herself, not sure if she was going to defend him or agree with the absolute truth of that title.  

The sound of his name was like a nail in her heart. 

The sound of his name was like the blood in her veins.

Baba Yaga was now as tall as the waist of the tallest of the Jotunns.

“You aren’t loyal to the usurper, are you, hag?” the angry soldier asked.

She laughed at him, “I’m loyal to myself alone.  And maybe the forest. And the earth beneath it. Maybe.  When I can be bothered to be. What does the Emperor Laufey,” she made a mocking bow, “want in my humble forest?  Is he thinking of building a sauna?”

When she stood back up she was almost to the heart of the shortest of the soldiers.  Nora was amazed. They didn’t seem to notice.

The bored soldier spoke now, “We are looking for the Betrayer’s mate.”

Nora stepped back behind the trees, shaking.  They hadn’t seen her.

“And she’s not in his bed?” Baba Yaga elbowed the leader, winking at him, now almost of a size with him.

Her teeth seemed larger, too.  

He shrugged.  “The King, er, Betrayer is still in his castle, but the rumor is, he sent her away because he knew they would be overrun.  So the Emperor sent this-” he held up a blue stone that looked like a diamond carved of ice, “to track her marks. But they gave out when we reached the edge of the mountains three weeks ago.”

It had been that long since Nora had begged Baba Yaga to try and use her magic on her skin.

“She’s here somewhere,” the angry soldier added, “I have her scent.”  He reached into a pack and pulled out a robe. Black silk with green vines embroidered on it, quilted and very warm.  Nora had loved it.

Baba Yaga, now taller than the tallest, “That’s too bad, soldat,” she said, shaking her head.  “I would have just sent you away, but I can’t have you talking about my little thief to the fucking Emperor.  I’m not done with her yet.” Then, she turned her head towards him and bit his cheek, her enormous teeth gouging into his flesh and jaw and eye, snapping through bone.

She shook him like a dog, sending him flying into the stunned, no longer bored soldier, while her long claws raked through the throat of the leader like a grater through soft cheese.  His gurgling body felled a tree as he pitched to the earth, and Baba Yaga stood over him, watching him die, while she chewed and swallowed the flesh from the angry soldier’s face.

The sickle, which had grown with her, beheaded the last of them before he could shake off the stunning force of his dead comrade’s body striking his.

Baba Yaga, again smaller than Nora, turned to her, covered in blood and shaking.  “I’m too old for this shit,” she spat out, along with a bit of Jotunn tendon. She whistled, a low sound that made Nora’s nerves shudder, and the animals flooded back into the forest, and attacked the dead and dying giants, making bones of them in moments.

Nora didn’t throw up, but she didn’t have dinner that night either.  

She drank a glass of honey wine and watched Baba Yaga eating what she called, “Meat, just meat.  Goulash, food, who cares?” when Nora had asked what it was. It was going to be kasha for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a while, then.

“So you know who I am?”

“I always knew.  I didn’t care. You aren’t eating, but you are still doing the dishes.  And Chernaya ran into the forest with the rest of the animals. It’s not dark, yet.  Go find him and then fix the fence.”

“But what about the Jotunns?  Those won’t be the only ones looking for me, and what if they come through the village?  I know you don’t care what happens to them but I do.”

The old woman finished her meal and belched, “Ush, I shouldn’t eat this.  At my age I get such indigestion, but every now and then I need a treat. Go get the goat.  They won’t find you, little thief, not without the King’s pretty wedding gift gone.” She gestured to Nora’s unmarked arm, “Now they won’t know where to start looking.”

 

Nora took a path towards the stream that wouldn’t take her past the now empty space where the Jotnar had died.  What the animals and Baba Yaga had left behind the earth itself had swallowed, but evidence of the slaughter remained in frostburnt and broken branches.

Already, the forest was starting to heal itself, with new buds coming from the earth and the blackened birch leaves falling to blanket the ground so new ones could grow.

The light was especially golden when she reached the part of the forest that had not been blighted by the Frost Giants.  The green seemed fierce, almost aggressive, and it was warm. Strangely warm, as if pushing back at the cold that had come too soon to a place that had so little heat.  She took off the padded jacket that she didn’t really need anyway.

In the attic of the cottage there were chests of women's clothing, some of it so old it fell apart, some of it nearly new, but all worn.  When she had asked where it came from, Baba Yaga gave her an old lady shrug. “You are not the first silly girl to end up here. You won’t be the last, either.”

Nora had pulled on the heaviest pants, the thickest shirt, the padded jacket- not because she was cold but because she didn’t like to feel undressed at first.  Now she was just used to it.

When she reached the stream she didn’t see the goat, but it curved pretty far around a low hill and she again wasn’t in any hurry so she sat on the brink of the water and thought about if she should leave.  But she knew Baba Yaga wouldn’t let her free before her year and a day was over, and it had really just begun.

After a while she heard some splashing, and then the unmistakable sound of Chernaya’s arrogant bleat.

Around the bend a lovely tree, unlike any other in the woods bent over the water, creating a kind of green and flowering bower.  Beneath it, on the brink of the stream, Chernaya had a mouthful of cloth that he was tugging at. 

Holding onto the other leg of what was apparently a pair of pants was a man with his back to her, standing in the water.  He was naked but for his linen, which was soaked to near invisibility and barely hung on his slim hips. 

For an yokel moment Nora stared at his behind open mouthed.  It was flawless, and she had the right to judge that.

His short black hair was wet, and his strong shoulders and arms were straining slightly as he pulled steadily at the material, clearly trying not yank and tear his trousers.  The long muscles of his back were bunched under his ivory pale skin. 

Nora had never thought that flesh so … light and smooth could be beautiful, but it was.  It invited touch. 

“Let go, you foul beast,” he growled at the goat.  His voice was deep and, shockingly, sounded like the Asgardians she had met in the Castle.

Not thinking it would do any good, Nora called out, “Chernaya!” 

The goat, clearly bored with harassing this yet other stranger to his domain, let go of the pants and rushed over to Nora, butting her affectionately in the leg.  Apparently sharing a near death by Frost Giant had bonded them for the moment at least. 

It wasn’t a hard bump but she was on an angle and not ready for it, so she sat down hard, laughing at herself.  The goat laid his head on her shoulder, bumping her cheek with his. The unholy stink of him would never come out of her hair, she feared, but she stroked under his chin whiskers anyway.

“Thank you for saving my pants from that monster, boy.  But if he’s yours then you need to keep him better penned or you’ll end up owing someone for a visit to the tailor,” the man had climbed out of the water and was buttoning his trousers with one hand while he walked towards her, his other hand offered to help her up.

His chest was as perfectly proportioned at his back, with ridges of muscle, and a graceful curve of hip as well.  His hands were long fingered and elegant. And very, very warm. 

When she looked up at him, there was a black beard, neatly trimmed and bracketing a friendly smile.  There was a weariness to him, in spite of that open smile. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were rimmed with red.

Eyes that were as green as the exuberant forest.

It was the doctor that had cared for her when the King had poisoned her.  When she had been ill she had barely been aware of him, only that someone cared for her.  Cleaned her when she shit herself, when she vomited, and sweated through her blankets. Who patiently and with great care fed her and sat by her side.  

But, as little as she had seen him, she knew it was him.  

As she stood, he fell to his knees before her, his mouth open with shock, those green eyes damp.  He gulped and before she could stop him, he bowed his head and wept, “Oh, Majesty! I’ve looked and looked for you.  I thought you lost forever.” 

This close to him she could feel the heat of his body and she wondered if Asgardians were even warmer blooded than humans were.  While Baba Yaga and the villagers all felt warm to her now, if pleasantly so, this man was almost hot by comparison.

He took the hem of her blouse in a shaking hand and kissed it.

“Don’t,” she said, flustered and embarrassed.  Nora took his hand instead. He kissed her fingers instead, while looking up at her with such joy and relief on his beautiful, beautiful face.

The King’s face.

Her husband’s face.

Loki’s face on an Asgardian.

Before she could stop herself, she touched his cheek and his eyes closed in happiness.

They stayed like that while as the sun set and the goat got bored and wandered away.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song - which is by Eivør Pálsdóttir, a Faroese singer who has been all over my Tumblr lately - translates to: 
> 
> Spellbound I am, I am  
> The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me  
> Spellbound deep in my soul, in my soul  
> In my heart burns a sizzling fire, a sizzling fire
> 
> Spellbound I am, I am  
> The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me  
> Spellbound in my heart's root, my heart's root  
> My eyes gaze to where the wizard stood
> 
> And can be heard here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiFmZLICgM


	16. No One is Really Who They Think They Are, Are They?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora meets a familiar stranger, Baba Yaga takes in another stray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how short this chapter is.

“No!” 

The queen’s touch on his cheek turned into a shove, her hand covering his face like a mask.  He found himself sprawled on loam and dead leaves of the forest floor as she stalked away from him, a clearly amused goat gamboling next to her like a spring kid until it lost interest and took itself away into the woods.  She did not seem to notice or care and kept walking.

She yelled back over her shoulder,  “Go back and tell … HIM that I’m lost. That I’m  _ dead _ !  That he can’t ever have his grateful peasant to fawn over him any more or ever again!  Go back!”

He scrambled to his feet, running back to grab his tunic and back-pack, ashamed to have been before  _ Her Majesty _ in such a state of undress.  As he followed her, he hopped on one foot and then the other so he could tug on his boots.  She was over a rise and out of his sight in moments, so not bothering with laces or to button his shirt, he ran after her.

He could not bear to lose her now.

Even if she seemed … displeased with him for some reason.

He had spent enough time in the forest around Asgard, hunting and riding, that it had not been hard for him to follow her trail.  And he had been following her for long enough now that he felt that he could find her even if she were walking upon a sheet of unmarked glass.

The trail wound through a strange area of frost burn and blight, and then along a road made by walking - both by animals and humans - into a clearing with a neat little cottage, some penned goats, and a kitchen garden.  It was pleasant enough, but surely  _ she _ could not have been living in such humble surroundings?

And those rags she had been wearing.  Her hair shorn and uneven like a kitchen boy, her hands calloused, scuffed, and dirty.  It was wrong.

The king’s last words to him, emotionless and distracted, as he leaned over the latest reports from what was going to quickly turn into a shooting war, when he had said he was going after her, came to him again, “Very well.  It would be better, and less embarrassing than sending troops.”

“I do not do your bidding,  _ sire, _ ” he said with as much scorn as he could, his hands aching as he squeezed them at his sides.

“But you will go.  I know you, I saw you look at her.  I have heard how you say her name,” he continued to work, making a few notes on a map.

Then he had looked up, his slitted eyes the color of freshly spilled blood, his lips thin, “You know, of course, that if you do not find her, or if she should be deceased, I will have no use for you ever again.  Indeed, I will find your presence a burden. A distraction. So return with our- with _ the _ queen or not at all.”

He had found her trail with some effort, after following the members of the Resistance long enough to be certain that they had not taken the queen when they had absconded with Weide.  He knew that the king would want word of where Clulann was heading with the escaped  _ skrímsli,  _ but that would take time from his search and put Nora - he dared think her name only when far from the king - farther from them and at great risk.

The king could hunt his own prey.

For weeks and weeks he had traveled by day and night, only stopping when he knew that he was putting the hunt in danger from his weariness, running down hares and other small animals,  and eating as he trekked. Moving ever closer to the lands of the great, ancient witch who even the king stepped lightly around, he knew there was little chance that Nora would not end up crossing paths with Baba Yaga. he could only hope that the witch was not hungry, and that the markings the king had given the queen would protect her from any mischief that one might find amusing.

So he was a little surprised to now see Baba Yaga ushering the angry woman into her cottage.  Then she stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him from her porch. She was so tiny, even more so than his danity queen, and he tall enough, that when he reached her they were eye to eye.  Her lined face squinted at him, confused and interested.

“So, what are you, then?”  She leaned closer. Her eyes were the color of cold and her mouth was pursed and wrinkled, with hairs on her upper lip.  She was old in a way that had never been young, and while he did not fear her, he knew better than to be disrespectful.

“Your pardon for coming into your yard uninvited, I am here for her Majesty,  good madame,” he said, offering the bow he had been taught on Asgard.

“Pretty.  Pretty green eyes.  Pretty face. Pretty voice.  Pretty manners. If you turn around you probably will have a pretty ass.  But that wasn’t what I asked about, pretty boy. I asked what you are?”

“I am … I am the King’s personal … I am…”

For some reason he found that question more difficult to answer than he should.  He knew what he was. He was the king’s…

He was…

The old woman’s tart voice intruded on him, “Too hard?  I know, anyone as pretty as you is going to be dumb, so let’s try an easier one.  What’s your name?”

Ignoring her bad manners, he told her.

She raised an eyebrow and then burst out laughing.  “Wait here,” she said, turning to go into her house, and then turned back, flapping a hand at him, “wait, wait, beautiful.”

He stood, arms crossed, wondering if she had gone to fetch Nora, but when she came back out she was holding a small bowl, covered in frost.  Inside he could see sloshing blue fluid. 

Jotunn blood.

At least now he knew why the forest had been frost-burned.

She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a handful of items that she sorted out on the guardrail of her porch.  A skein of red yarn. Two rocks, one smooth and one jagged. Some nuts still in their shells. A small knife. Various bullets.  A piece of hard candy covered in lint. And several leaves. 

One of these she picked, touching it to the blood.  It froze solid with an elaborate working of frost.

Before he could move, distracted and curious as to what the witch was planning,  she had slapped it between his eyes where it stuck.

There was a blinding pain from the top of his head, like something was trying to push its way out.  He could almost hear it scraping at his scalp. 

No!

As he collapsed, trying to claw the bone back into place, he could see the witch nodding, a small smile on her face, whispering, “ Интересно… Come in when you get back up, pretty boy.  You can stay. I always need another strong back around here.”

 

Nora thought she heard a male voice screaming from outside and wondered if the Asgardian had followed her from the woods and had done something to anger Baba Yaga.  As she tried to step outside the old woman was entering. “Back, back. Your new friend is not feeling so good. Not feeling so … heh … feeling so himself, or Himself, right now.  Let him take a nap and you clean the kitchen. Make the fire again. He’ll want tea.”

“I don’t want him here.  He works for Loki. He looks like him,” she said sullenly, feeling invaded to have him here, “do you think he’s Loki’s son?  I know he was on Asgard for a while. I don’t care if he is-”

Baba Yaga snorted.  “You don’t care? Please, little thief, if you cared any more you would be out there demanding a paternity test.”

Nora turned away from the dishes, “A what?”

Baba Yaga shook her head vigorously, “Sorry.  Wrong timeline. It’s not so easy existing in all these universes at once.  Forget it, you care, you care and care and care and you can’t stop it.”

Grumbling, Nora finished the washing just in time for the tea to be finished and for the doctor to stumble into the cottage, mud on his face as if he had been laying on the ground, holding his head like someone with a hangover.

Before she could send him away again, Baba Yaga said, “Wash your face, and then come drink tea.  You look terrible, pretty boy.” She motioned to the pitcher and ewer near the little, wooden framed mirror.  He nodded his thanks, looking all of the while at Nora, even as he cleaned up.

“You’re very pale,” she said, looking back at him, taking her tea and sitting on the floor near the fire.  She wasn’t cold, but sometimes she liked to pretend she was. Nora missed being cold. “Even for an Asgardian.”

“I do not get out much, Majesty.”

Baba Yaga snorted so hard she inhaled her tea and spilled it down the front of her flower-covered dress, “Shit.  You two talk, I need to change.”

When they were alone, the doctor sat on the floor next to Nora.

“Get on the chair, or the sofa,” she said, pointing.  She didn’t like him being so close. His skin was hot and he smelled of the castle.  And of stones and salt and earth and fruit.

She had never wanted to lick anyone until she met the king, now she found herself wondering if this man would taste like him.  Would he be a sweet, sun-warmed peach, where the king was more like a cold, luscious pear straight from the tree?

Would she ever have her mind back from thinking about such ridiculous things?

Someday, when she was very old, she hoped so.

“I could never.  Not while you are upon the floor, Majesty,” he said, sounding appalled.

He probably got on well with Ceorl.

“Ok, then I’ll go then.”  Nora hoisted herself ungracefully into the seat, and the doctor seemed perfectly content to sit at her feet.  When she went to lift the cup to her lips, he started, lips pale as his ivory skin, his hand raised as if to knock it from her hand.  

“Don’t worry, pretty pretty, I made that cup myself.  I won’t poison Nora yet. She still has nearly a year she owes me,” Baba Yaga said, now in a blue dress that made her look like she had stolen it from a kindly grandmother who she later shoved down a well.  She lifted her own cup and took a lip-smacking draught, “Good stuff. And don’t worry, you’re too amusing to kill yet, either. Loki.”

Nora dropped her cup, also unconsciously catching it, not noticing the hot liquid splashing over her hand and the lap of her pants.

Baba Yaga laughed, “You were right, little thief, he shares blood and all sorts of other interesting things with the king.  Now, go put Chernaya back in the pen, he’s finally come home.”

Telling herself it didn’t matter who he was, or what he was called, Nora stepped over the doctor on her way out, her skin itching all over and her shoulders aching.

 

Knowing it would displease her, Loki followed Nora out of the cottage.  He wanted to get away from the witch, who seemed to find something about him amusing and he knew enough of magic users to know that could not bode well for him.

The queen was ‘shoo-ing’ the shaggy black goat into the pen.  After the amused beast consented she then started lifting logs that had fallen from its fence into place.

“Majesty!” Loki was horrified.  He ran to her, taking the fencing from her small hands, “You mustn’t.  Allow me, please.”

As he quickly returned the pen to order the queen stood glaring at him, hands on her hips, “What are you?  Some … some Half- _ gardian _ bastard of his?  Just good enough to do the dirty work and get sent out of the castle to chase his runaway pets?”

Her eyes burned as much as any Frost Giant, and her musical voice was fierce and loud, like some ancient warrior queen.  

A tiny one, but still.

He found himself just smiling at her like a foolish boy, not understanding a word she was saying, “Who I am is Loki, Majesty.  As to what I am, I am your servant, if you will have me. Who do you believe I would, I  _ could _ serve, other than you?”

She gave him an adorably incredulous look, gesturing a few times with her hands towards his face, as if she expected him to be able to answer his own question.  

Now they were both confused.

She closed her eyes, forcing the words out, “Loki,” she said it like a black curse.  “The actual Loki,” she repeated, softly, “my husband.” 

“I am _ no  _ blood with him, even if I share his name, and I would never do that  _ monster’s _ bidding, my Queen,” he spat the words out, furious at the very idea, but then calmed himself.

There was a loneliness in her voice that made him want to punch through stone.  A longing that offended his understanding. Could she possibly still have feelings, even tenderness, for her husband after his terrible betrayal?  Could she possibly want him?

While her eyes were still closed Loki made so bold as to step closer.  Perhaps she simply needed to be close to someone. The thought made him fearless.  He could at least be someone, could he not?

Nora was so small, he marveled again at her delicate features, her narrow shoulders, and her stubborn mouth.  

She was so small that if he bent over he would be able to shade her from the sun, to shelter her from all weather.

“I am here for you alone,” he whispered down to her.  She looked up, her eyes so large and dark, her lips slightly open.

Before he knew what he was about he kissed her.  Nothing could have stopped him.

 

One large hand spread over her back with the softest pressure as he stepped in, the other caressed her jaw, tilting her head up so she met those astonishingly green eyes.  Greener than the fir trees and the emeralds in the earrings she had given to Baba Yaga. Greener than she had been when she had first met the king. 

The opposite of  _ his  _ eyes.

He barely laid his mouth over hers, just the barest brush of lip on lip. The strange brush of his beard against her chin and cheeks, soft but scratching.  His flesh burning like he was nothing but fire beneath all of that unmarked skin. 

If he kept it up she would be a statue of ash.

There was a flash in his eyes, deep red behind the green.  Nora recognised the mad way her body responded to that sweet, romantic gesture.   Like she was some animal in heat. Just a Midgardian farm animal.

Then she knew.

She knew the way she knew how to sing.  

How was it possible?  How could he have changed his very flesh?  His horns, where were his horns? Her hand brushed the top of his strange, short hair.  It curled about her fingers, wild in the humid air. When he preened against her touch she knew.

Another secret.  Another lie. This transformation, this person he pretended to be, because he thought she was so stupid that she wouldn’t know her own husband.

The rage, sudden and sweeping threatened to drive her mad, knowing that he thought no more of her than of any useful tool - a very useful tool since he had found  _ so many _ ways to use her - no matter what he had said or done or claimed to feel.  

The rage at herself that she had made it so easy for him from the first night they had been together.  Practically begging him to do anything he wanted so long as she could stay with him. Because she was nothing and to her he was everything from the first moment she saw him.

And now he was playing with her?  Some incomprehensible game that she couldn’t understand and of course would never be allowed to win.

“Liar!”  Nora screamed, reaching down towards the ground, making fists and pulling the earth open so it took him in, just as she had seen Baba Yaga do with the remnants of the Jotunns in the forest.  

It wasn’t a pit, it was a mouth.  The earth was eating him, stones rising within it to chew.  

He clawed and begged, “Majesty, forgive me!  Majesty! I beg you for mercy! I shall never touch you again!  Please!” Over and over, as he fought the pull of the dirt, his beautiful muscles no match for the earth itself.  He would gain a few inches and then lose them as quickly. Soil and gravel filled his mouth as he cried out to her, turning to mud on his sweating flesh, caking his beard.

Soon his face would be covered.  Why wasn’t he using his magic?

Why wasn’t he fighting?

“Stop, little thief,” Baba Yaga was beside her, touching her arm.  

“I wouldn’t have-.”

“I know.  Go in now.” 

“He hurt me.  He never even said he was sorry,” Nora heard herself.  She sounded like a child.

“I know, I know,” Baba Yaga turned her towards the cottage and Nora walked away, hearing Loki gasp and flail behind her, trying to pull himself out now that the earth had stopped eating him.

  
  



	17. The Past is Not the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's Past, Nora's Present

 

The children were still told the stories, even though the people they were told about were long dead.

The  _ Vikkuaglød. _

Before the Jotnar knew the stars, in the days when not all of the planet was yet theirs the bravest yet smallest tribe, with the mightiest and most subtle shamen and shamanka, were the Clan  _ Vikkuaglød.   _

They alone knew kenning well enough to game with the dragons who then lived in the creavasses where heat escaped from the core of the world.  Who would venture into the high ice and defeat the trolls by cunning rather than by strength. Whose sons were also their daughters and whose daughters were also their sons.  Amongst whom the most powerful were said to each be an army unto themself, able to raise a force that shared one form and one will but could act as many.

It was said they could steal the tribe marks from another Jotunn’s skin by merely laying with them.

It was said that there were those amongst them who could make themselves look like your warbrother, your mate, your worst enemy, whatever they should choose in order to confuse and confound, both for victory or simply for fun.  Chaos was said to amuse them. To feed their powers.

Because of this, soon the other tribes refused to mate with them, either through marriage or for any other purpose.  Besides, they no longer needed these strange creatures, quick and full of deceit and trouble. The dragons had gone to the sky and the trolls had been cast back to Troldheim.  Jotunheim was free of menaces, save for the  _ Vikkuaglød.   _ For had not millenia of fighting those monsters turned them into monsters as well?

Over time their tribe dwindled, forced into smaller and smaller spaces within the more temperate zone of the planet so they too became smaller in stature generation after generation.  It was said that if a young Jotunn found themself separated from a hunt, somewhere upon the floes of the high ice, or should be on the water of the great sea during a storm, if they saw a lone figure striding over ice or stepping through the waves they should flee.  

It was a  _ Vikkuaglød  _ sorcerer _ ,  _ hunting for a lover.

They would be delicate, tiny even for the one of the Jotnar, but possessed of the greatest beauty.  Their downturned eyes glowing like hot stones, but not red, rather with a color that existed nowhere else on Jotunheim.  Their skin always perfectly etched with the whorls of whatever tribe would be most attractive to the eye of their beholder, sometimes writhing and reforming hypnotically even as their victim watched, creating an erotic spell that would be irresistible to anyone who looked too long.

When they were finished they would leave their lover spent upon the ground, their skins as unmarked as an Aesir, their bodies and minds spoiled for any other.  They would often wander, searching for that lost love, until they themselves were forever lost.

Once and again, as the  _ Julma  _ clan took prominence amongst the tribes and the Jotunns grew closer to their time in the stars, it was said that  _ Julma  _  leaders would secretly meet with  _ Vikkuaglød  _ shamen and warband leaders, taking their council in return for the promise that when they were the chiefest family upon Jotunheim that they would share their power with the shunned other tribe.  

It was said that it was  _ Vikkuaglød  _ magic that first crowned the  _ Julma  _ with the horns that theretofor would be their blazon as Kings and Queens of the Jotnar.

It was said that Ljós, first High King of all of Jotunheim held a great feast and mead hall in honor of his ascension, inviting all of the tribes and clans under the promise of guest safety.  The leader of the  _ Vikkuaglød  _ listened to the scop sent with his invitation and knew there was only treachery in the heart of  Ljós, treachery and fear that the other tribes would not trust him to rule if he was allied with his people.

He went anyway, with the bulk of his tribe.

It was their weird.   It had been seen, when the  _ Julma  _ rose, they would fall.  Not even they would fight against it.  

It was said.

When the feasting was done and the drinking went on, when the drink served to the shapeshifters was drugged and when the murdering was complete, the king stirred the blood of the fallen tribe in a vat of mead and shared it with the others, that they would be forever bound by this crime.  That some of their power might preserved.

But what was  _ never _ said, what was not known, was there was one  _ Vikkuaglød _ left.  The last son of the tribe, the most beautiful and clever child ever born to them.  Powerful and, like so many who come to life in privation, utterly without conscience.   And whilst his people were slaughtered he crept into the bedchamber of the Jotunn king and slew his new bride, hiding her beneath the bed and taking her face and mighty form, enjoying the luxury and cold of the royal chambers.

When he bore the king his first prince, Legja, that child was  _ the _ perfect Jotnar babe - huge and with tiny horn buds like a tree which would grow mighty, first beginning to leaf.  As he held the prince to his breast, he smiled quietly with a stolen mouth. It would take generations for the magic of his blood to build and push the weakness of the other clans out of the way, but it would happen.

The cuckoo was in its nest, hidden in the bloodline of the king.  

It amused him to think of that future  _ Vikkuaglød _ , born a prince, born a princess, their seidr untrained, unknown, and wildly powerful, sewing discord and destroying all that had been founded in that night of treachery.

 

So many years later ….

Frigga looked at the Jotunn king’s eldest son.

He was small for one of his kind, which she had expected, with soon-to-be lofty horns that were just beginning to coil as he entered the beginning of his sexual maturity.  He was beautiful, with delicate features schooled to a permanent blankness, but with a sullenness to his eyes that was unmistakable. That at least was to be expected, he was of an age with Thor and boys could be so truculent, when they had more feelings than the words to express them.

Actually, looking at the Jotunn Prince’s clever eyes Frigga was certain that Loki has many words, it was an interested ear to listen to any of them that he lacked.

What did surprise her was the powerful magic she could see roiling just beneath his indigo flesh.  There were, of course, those who used secretly seidr and other, more primitive magics amongst the Jotnar.  They tended to live alone, in the caves like their ancestors, coming down only now and then to make pronouncements or use their gifts against outside threats, then quickly retreating back to the wilderness before they were seen as a threat.

Laufey’s family had no love of wizards, but they had even been too practical to do without them entirely.  A tool was a tool. 

The fact that his son, his heir for the time being, had such power no doubt made Loki even more of a disappointment.  It was clear from the way the power was bound up, overgrown and snarled within him, that the prince had never been given any training.  Perhaps he was unaware that he had it all.

That would be _ just  _ like his parents.  

“All-Mother,” the prince bowed, just the perfect amount to show respect for her as his elder, as well as the ruler of her people, while also showing that he recognised that she reigned at the sufferance of his father.  It carefully walked the line between compliment and insult.

The boy was subtle.  Surely another strike against him in his father’s home.

“I thank you for your hospitality to come, and for this opportunity to bring our formerly adversarial realms into yet greater concord.”

He must be miserable on Jotunheim.

Thor rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.

She loved her son desperately, but she rather wished she could have made this an exchange rather than just a one sided visit.  He was going through that rough period that began when a boy’s voice started to change and ended sometime around death and could be rather exhausting in the middle.  

Hunting kraken in the Jotunn sea for a decade or two would probably do him a world of good, and he could use the experience of other Realms before coming to his throne.

As it was, he and Prince Loki would either end up hating each other or being fast friends.

Eventually it was both, sometimes sequentially, sometimes all at once.

Frigga stepped towards the boy prince and extended her hand, taking his before he could move away.  He cried out softly, pulling his hand back in fear of scalding her with frost. It would not do to damage a client monarch on his first visit offworld.

Her hand and arm were untouched.

“What…?” He looked at her.

“It’s a simple enough spell, with practice,” she smiled at his astonished face, the first boyish look she had seen from him.  She leaned down, and said in a soft, conspiratorial voice, “Would you like me to show you how it is done?”

He hesitated.  She could see the conflict on his now unveiled features.  He wanted it. Longed for it desperately.

Any creature with that much magic - and this close up she could tell it was more seidr than she had ever seen trapped in flesh, it was more like what one might see in an object of power - would crave use for it.  Would require an outlet for enough of it to keep him from going mad. 

But the Jotunns mistrust of the Aesir, and of any magic not produced by blood sacrifice and hallucinations and other crude methods, were deeply ingrained.

“Consider it,” she said, taking his arm, “now, shall we walk to the palace?  The view from this part of the Bifrost is quite splendid this time of day.” She nodded her thanks to Heimdal, and motioned to her son and his retinue to follow.  

 

The next twenty years passed quickly…

 

The stones fell from where they danced and arabesque’d teasingly about Thor’s head, a few of them striking him on the forehead and shoulders.  “OW!!!!” 

“I told you not to move,” Loki said irritably.  

“My nose itched!”

“The mighty Thor, brought low by pollen,” Loki murmured, using his power to lift the fallen rocks and pile them in a neat tower next to Frigga where she sat on the garden bench.

“The Master of Magics, confounded by a sneeze!”  Thor snapped back.

Stifling a laugh the Queen waved them away, “Enough!  Thor, you came to take Loki hunting, so go.”

The two of them bowed to her, ready to flee responsibility.

When she had started training Loki, things had progressed slowly.  He had been both eager and reticent. His hands itching for power, but his pride sticking whenever he failed, causing him to sneer at the endeavor and retreat.  Only then to return some days later, as if nothing had happened, ready for another lesson.

Frigga had been patient.  Patience was her watchword in all of life.

Since coming to Asgard she had needed to be so, surrounded as she was by the stubbornest, proudest, often most irksome people in the Nine Realms.  And it had been only been worse since Odin had been forced to bend the knee to Jotunheim and then go into the Odinsleep until Laufey would allow him to wake.  They were displeased to be ruled by the Frost Giants, particularly through their King’s Vanaheimian wife.

In time they had come to accept her, if never the yoke of the Emperor.  The Asgardians knew she fought the battles for them that she could win, and took the brunt of Laufey’s displeasure to spare them.  They were now as loyal to her as they had been to Odin.

So she knew she could win this battle with Loki as well.  By pretending to not fight it, to allow him to believe that every capitulation was on her part and not actually him doing what he wished to do but could not make himself admit to wanting.

And then there had been Thor.  And his friends.

The Jotunn Prince’s unshakeable demeanor of contempt had been a provocation that her son could not let stand.  As much as she regretted it, Frigga could not entirely blame him. Thor was meant to be king, and this interloper to his realm, who was occupying so much of the queen’s time would some day rule over him.  It would be galling to anyone, let alone her hot-headed child.

Fortunately Jotunns were tough, even small ones, and Thor had little natural defense against Loki’s icy touch.  Nor did his companions. Only Hogun, smarter and kinder than the rest - he  _ was _ from Vanaheim, after all and therefore less mindlessly belligerent than his Aesir friends - had been spared the pain of a deep tissue ice burn.  

Frigga stayed out of matters between the boys as much as she could.  They would be better served for their futures to make their own peace.  Once or twice, however, she had intervened when things were going too badly for the ally-less Loki.  

After once such time, when she had taken Thor to task before his friends and a number of servants he had run off for several days to lick his wounds, drinking and hunting.  

When he had finally returned, she had been visiting his father.

Odin looked handsome in his sleep, she thought.  She remembered when she had first been presented to the widowed and grieving king, Frigga had thought him ugly and he had barely looked at her.  The loss of his first wife, and his firstborn daughter, the heir to his throne, in the endless war with Jotunheim was still a bleeding wound and she knew he had no desire to marry her.  Which had made her like him more. 

What had started as political expediency between them had become friendship, and then love.  She missed him. Not her king but her lover, her husband. For all that he was stubborn, sure he was right, prone to hasty and extreme choices, he was also her mate, her child’s father, and the one person who understood her burden.

“Am I doing the right thing?  Teaching Laufey’s son how to use power that could be used against Asgard?   Against all of the Realms? He’s so unlike his father, I sometimes forget who he is,” she said to her sleeping love.

“Do you…“ Thor’s voice came from behind her, tentative and unlike his normal tone, “do you wish I was more like Loki?” he asked.

She turned and looked at her son.  So strong and sure most of the time, now clearly hungover, his clothing dirty, his hair a wild cloud around his head.  His eyes sad. “No, my love. I could never wish for you to be other than you are. I will admit that it has been a... a pleasant distraction to have someone to share my knowledge with.  And I had hoped that it might incline him to view us with greater favor when he takes his throne.”

He settled next to her, placing a hand on the golden glass that enclosed the father than he could not even remember, “Sometimes I wish I could do what you do.  What he can do.”

Frigga placed an arm around her son’s broad shoulders.  She loved him more than anything, had from the moment she had known he was coming to her life.  No one and nothing was close to that love, but in truth, she had come to love the prickly, proud, clever Jotunn Prince as well.   It was as if he was also always meant to be hers. 

“Someday, when your power comes, you will be able to do things we can now only dream of,” she said, kissing his cheek.

The breakthrough for both Loki and Thor had come when the Jotunn Prince had been able to enchant a bridle and saddle that would protect a steed from his cold.  Frigga had watched as his hands had shaken so hard he could barely prepare the animal. It had been afraid at first, but then had gentled,.

Loki stroked the black horse’s mane, a kind of wonder on his face.  “I still do not know how to ride,” he said ruefully.

At that moment, Thor rode up, his white stallion dancing irritably.  “Well, you can’t learn from down there, can you?”

Loki gave him a squinting look and then put a foot in the stirrup, pulling himself up and nearly pitching over the other side.  “By the Norns!” he cried out, catching himself across the stomach. 

Frigga left them to it, Thor’s laughter echoing through the royal stables.  

Within a day Loki could ride like one born to the saddle.  Within a week they were hunting together and a bond was formed.  The diminished Bilgesnipe population was a small price to pay for peace in the palace.  Now, twenty years on, the two of them were … not exactly like brothers, perhaps cousins.  

Before the boys - she could not think of them as anything else - could leave, one of the Einherjar approached, looking nervous.

“My Queen, the Emperor Laufey has sent a message,” he said, proffering an envelope to her.

The note was short to the point of rudeness.  

Loki and Thor stood shoulder to shoulder.  Her son’s hands in fists at his side, Loki’s head tilted back, as if expecting a blow.

She looked at him and he knew.  He stood up straighter, angling away from his friend, “How soon?”

“The beginning of the month.  You are to go to Svartalfheim for the … for the foreseeable future.” 

He nodded, his face blank as paper.

 

In the weeks up to the time Loki was to leave, every time Frigga approached him about a lesson he found a way to avoid her, or to put her off.  He had to study more about the Dark Elves and their court. His effects were in poor order for travelling. He was tired from late nights and feared he would not be at his best.

Each time stiffer, his body showing the pain that he refused to admit at the thought of leaving.  Of trying to survive the vicious court of Svartalfheim. 

She knew what he was doing.  He was saying goodbye to his magic.   

All the while she could see it building within him.  Magic, once tapped, could not be contained. It was like life itself and would find a way.

It did.

 

“MOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Thor’s voice roared into her rooms, “MOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Frigga rose from bed and hastily donned a robe, her handmaids all in disarray as their handsome, enormous prince barrelled into her bedchamber.  It was not even dawn.

“Calm yourself, my son.”

“Mother, something is … terribly wrong with Loki.  We were to go on a last hunt before he left and he-  you must come. NOW!”

The Queen considered herself imaginative and perceptive, but none of the scenarios she imagined as she rushed towards the guest chambers prepared her for what she found.

Two figures, tall and straight, with raven hair, fought.  One of them, a Jotunn, held a dagger in his hand, snarling at his Aesir twin, who had gathered a ball of green and golden power in his hand, ready to let fly.  The room around them had been destroyed. The bed-hangings smoldered with enchanted fire. The windows onto the balcony had been smashed by a thrown body. Almost every carefully wrought bit of furnishing was little more than rubble and kindling.

“Stop!” she commanded, spreading her arms and tossing them apart.  

The Jotunn stood first, sneering down at her, “You dare use your powers on a member of the Imperial family?”

Frigga was not going to be scolded by one who was near to being her child.  “I will if they abuse their guest right by behaving like a marauding child rather than a prince,” she said, motioning to the room.

He bowed his head.  Slightly. “Apologies, Majesty.”

The Aesir had gotten up and had approached them, looking warily at his opponent, then bowing deeply to Frigga.  “Forgive me, my Queen. But when I woke and found myself sharing a … bed with this creature I was understandably upset.”  His green eyes looked at her with concern that she would not give her forgiveness.

“Mother…?” Thor said, looking back and forth from one Loki to the other.

“Oh, dear,” Frigga said.  It seemed that the prince’s magic - and his dreaming mind - had decided to take matters into his own hands.

She down sat with the two of them, each staring daggers at the other, “Your HIghness?”  Only the Jotunn responded by nodding to her. “Loki?” The Aesir gave her a look of concern, but the Jotunn seemed to not recognise the name.  “Why did you not tell me you were a shapeshifter?”

They both looked confused.

“Or about your ability to create clones?”

Their expressions changed not a whit.

It had taken separating the two of Loki’s and then hours of magical testing and questioning, and finally a visit to the Norns to look at his strange and tangled life-thread before Frigga finally was able to reason out what had occurred.  And that she had been going about all of his training wrong.

The next morning, Loki stayed in his rooms whilst Frigga and Thor escorted the Crown Prince of Jotunheim to the Bifrost.  After he said his goodbyes, she turned to Heimdal, “Keep an eye on the clone. If he disappears we are going to have some difficult questions from the Emperor.”

For another twenty years, Loki stayed and trained with her, hunting with Thor, and studying.  Then, one morning, he turned to her at breakfast, his eyes not seeing her, as if hearing something from far away.  “Someone has killed me,” he said. 

And was gone.

Days later there was report of what had been thought to be a successful assassination attempt on Prince Loki on Svartalfheim.  A dagger dipped in Eitr poison. It had visibly eaten away at his body and he had stumbled back to his rooms. When the assassins had followed to watch the task be finished, the doors had opened.  Loki, fully healed, the horns that had been only half-grown on his brow now fully formed, stepped forth. Pulling daggers from the air, he had driven one that was licked with fire into the heart of the Jotunn conspirator, whilst throwing the other, green with seidr, into the eye of the Dark Elf assassin.

The next time Frigga saw Loki on Vanaheim decades later, she knew two things.  That he had little recollection of the time he had split from himself and if asked would not acknowledge, would perhaps could not understand the truth, that the boy who had stayed with her on Asgard was truly him, and it was his clone that he had made the prince.  

 

Later still…

Nora looked at Loki.  Pale, smooth fleshed Loki who was chopping wood, his long arms bunched with muscle and his chest taking deep, even breaths with each swing and hated him.

It had been three days that he had been here, being useful and helpful, and always looking at her.   

He even was allowed to sleep by the fire, while she had to sleep in the yard.

“He’s cold, you aren’t,” Baba Yaga said, shrugging and handing her a blanket she didn’t need.

“He’s not cold!  He _ is _ the fucking cold!” Nora yelled back over her shoulder.

She didn’t believe he didn’t know.  How could he not know who he was? What he was?  The proudest, the cruelest, the most arrogant and assured man that ever strode through the universe was not fooling her even if he was fooling Baba Yaga, she had thought for the last three days.

Then, this morning she had seen him filling a bucket with goat shit for Baba Yaga’s garden and she knew it was true.

The King might play at being this Aesir idiot to confound her, as a part of some long scheme to get her to return with him and play Queen for the masses so he could finish his war, but his pride would never let him gather manure, certainly not while it was still steaming from Chernaya’s bowels.

Something in her twisted at the thought of his diamond brilliant mind being lost.  To not be yourself, even if yourself was horrible, had be a nightmare. No matter how stupidly pleased he seemed to be just to be near(ish) to her, she could almost sense the rest of him trapped within, beating on his brain to get out.  

But then something else twisted in her.  Something that hadn’t been there before him. Something dark and cold and mean.  Or maybe it was that the poison he had given her had eaten away at the cage that had held that part of Nora.

“Loki?” she called out, leaning on the side of the shed.

Eagerly, he looked at her, “Yes, Majesty?”

“Take off your tunic.”

He looked confused, “I- my tunic?”

“Yes,” she walked towards him.  The closer she got the more irritated she was.  Her brain felt tight, her nerves were jangling with fear.  He could turn back in a moment and she would be helpless, he could do anything to her.  Her skin even felt tight. Ichy. Like a sunburn half-healed. 

She refused her fear, “I want you to take off your tunic.”

His green eyes were huge and his mouth slightly open.  He looked so innocent. With haste he put down the axe and flicked the frogs of his tunic open, letting it fall onto the dirt.  

He was glistening with wet from the sun and the axe, his skin without a mark and pale as milk.  By any reasonable standard he was hideous. 

Nora wanted to rub herself on him.  To bite and mark him herself.

Instead she made a dismissive gesture at him.  “Carry on.”

Loki blushed, but picked up the axe.  “Majesty,” he said with a bow and returned to his work, a look of sad understanding on his face.

Nora sat and watched him.  He was glorious. And humiliated.  And aroused. 

Her skin itched something fierce, but even that wasn’t enough to distract her from thoughts of what she wanted to do to him.  For him to do with her.

“Swing harder!” she ordered.

He redoubled his efforts, a small frown marring his features.  

She was going to get him out of hiding if it killed him.  And then she was going to run and next time he would never find her.

“Not nice, Little Thief,” Baba Yaga said, thrusting a bucket at her.  “Play with your new toy later. No, milk the goats, Your Majesty,” she said with an elaborate curtsy.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much all of the Jotun/Jotunheim stuff in this chapter is made up by me, and not from Marvel. Partly because I haven't read anything that fills in my questions about their culture and history, and partly because I am always trying to figure out why Loki is so different. He, of course, will tell you its because he is a god, and therefore unique.


	18. The More Things Change, The More We Don't Know What We're Doing

The war was going well.  

The King’s off world allies had sent him a great deal of valuable intelligence in return for future consideration on magnesium shipments.  Barren’s new flying tanks had been ‘retrofitted’ for human use - ie, the fake interiors that had been made to look like they were created for Jotun troops had been removed.  The testing of the Midgardian pilots was going well. They were naturally better flyers than his people.

Humans dreamt of flight, Jotuns dreamt of killing.

His three biggest concerns were when, exactly, his father was planning his counter-attack, Weide’s ‘rescue’ by the Resistance, and Nora.

He knew that Laufey had only waited so long as he had because he was trying to decide if he should engage his own troops or hire mercenaries.  The Imperial forces were already spread thinner than any outsiders knew. It was the war with Muspelheim that had done it. Ongoing, unceasing for centuries.  

Stupid.  Pointless.  Pride driven.

Just planet after planet of Frost Giants and Fire Giants throwing themselves at each other, mindlessly disappearing in a bank of steam from which hardly a warrior emerged.  Those who did would stagger a few feet to die in clear air, that side being declared the victor, but none surviving on either side to hold the field. 

Say what you would about the wars with Asgard, at least it was an actual war and not two worlds vying to see which of their armies did the best lemming imitation, he thought to himself as he wrote a message to General Aluth, the leader of the Jotun forces that had decided to declare for Terra.  They had recently taken the last hold-out spaceport in Chukchi, which had been especially fortuitous as the Admiral in charge of the base had been so certain they would not be taken that he hadn’t sent the ships that were docked there into space. 

The King now had a dozen mixed Jotun ships, including a blockade runner, should he need one.

No, his father would certainly send mercenaries.  The question being would they stay bought or could he out bid the Emperor?  Possibly. He quickly sent a message to his aunt to assess the current standing of the ruby mines in Namyazeik and Chibuene.  The Elves, both Dark and Light had the largest contingents of sell-swords and they just loved pretty, shiny things. Sadly most of the homeworld was mined out, whilst Midgard, primarily used for farming, was still mineral rich.

Weide, for all that his running around out in the world was a problem, was a problem that there was little he could do about.  Even if he were to find his old friend it had only been a fluke that he had captured him the first time. At least he knew that Stiofan was too tender-hearted to use Kalmus in the way he would be most dangerous until he was truly desperate.  For the time being he would have to wait and do nothing. 

Fortunately that was one of his strong suits.

Nora would be a trickier problem.

He rose and walked onto his balcony.  The night had been clear but now, as dawn approached, he could tell there would be rain. Not a wild storm, but something quieter and steady.   He thought that it would be pleasant to have his queen with him. To point out the stars to her before the clouds rolled in and tell her their stories.  To share his plans. To have her look at him with those bright eyes and take in every word, understanding what he did not say as clearly as what he did.

To take her to his bed.  To tell her the rest of his secrets.  To show her the rest of her own secrets, the ones she did not know that she had.

Perhaps his feelings were not as ostentatious as those of that other … being … but they existed.  

He wanted his queen.  

He was thinking that when the attack began.

 

That night the three of them ate dinner together in the cottage.  Up until that point Nora had refused to eat with him, with Loki - though she still had a hard time calling him that even in her head.  Instead she had taken her food outside each time. And each time then  _ he  _ had taken _ his  _ food outside, to the opposite side of the cottage, refusing to take a meal indoors if his queen would not.

It was just one of his annoying habits.  There was the way he would sneak out of the cottage after he thought Nora was asleep and would sleep sitting up against the wall of the shed, a knife on his lap, guarding her against the goats or whatever he thought was coming.

Or how he would sometimes bow to her.

How he did everything she told him to do.  Which was not only strange and embarrassing, but gave Nora bad ideas.  Ideas she was ashamed of. Ideas that made it hard to sleep when she knew he was just on the other side of a wooden wall and that if she asked he would happily, joyfully come in and serve her in any way she asked.  

Would it be like being with the king?

Would it be treason?  Adultery? Would he make her moan and would her body clutch him inside and out the way it did her husband?  Who he also was … and was not.

How easy it would be to make him come in and lie down and let her take him.

She would ease herself onto him slowly, until there was no space between them.  Until he could go no farther and then there would be pain like a bite because of his size, because of the time that had passed, a bite that would ease into an ache, and then a throb, and she would ride him until she collapsed.  Then she would tell him to take her hips and use her to finish himself.

He would do it.  He would work her up and down, leaving bruises on her hips, on her thighs, his body arching beneath her like the curve of the earth.  He would want to kiss, but she would lean back, her body bowing away from him, her fingers touching herself, touching the base of his cock, and when they both came gasping she would make him leave.

So, she didn’t call him in.  She couldn’t be that person. Not if she wanted to be herself ever again.

Trying to be herself was why she was now trying to eat dinner inside and talk.

It wasn’t working.

For one thing, more kasha.

For another, he sat across from her and she found it hard to eat when she looked at him.  Partly because he looked so strange, with his odd coloring, and uncanny eyes. Partly because he was so familiar, with his beautiful features, and the way his graceful hands held a spoon or even a cup.  Partly because even though he professed to be her servant, she was still scared of him.

Loki might not know who he was, but Nora did.  She knew what that made him capable of.

So she couldn’t eat.

Baba Yaga didn’t help matters.

After watching the two of them, back and forth, back and forth, waiting for something to happen she snorted into her buckwheat.   Clearly they were boring her, so she decided to make some trouble. “Don’t worry, little thief. I did the cooking, no poison here.”

The quiet between them turned into silence.  

Nora dropped her fork, whipping her head to the witch, “Thank you for that.  Now I just have to worry about these mushrooms and having hallucinations all night.  Can everyone stop putting things in my food, please?”

Loki put his spoon down, his eyes on his plate, and then looked at her.  His mouth was distorted with a snarl, “What do you mean, hallucinations?”

She picked up her fork again and made herself take a bite.  It was still kasha and even harder to choke down now that poison had been brought up.  Nora could feel herself start to cramp up, and her stomach burned, then she felt something like her fingers and toes had been dipped in something acidic.  Like she was being eaten away at. Every time she thought she had forgotten what the poison had done to her, her body remembered.

Hopefully she wouldn’t have to run out to the jakes.  The last time she hadn’t made it and had consigned a pair of trousers to the fire afterwards, they were so horrific.

“Majesty?”  Loki’s voice was tight and insistent.

When she looked up he had taken up his spoon as well and it was now deformed and twisted in his grasp.  

She shrugged, “This one-“ she pointed at Baba Yaga, “thought it would do me some good to run around in the forest like a madwoman for a while.  For almost a week, actually. I attacked animals and was covered in mud and dirt. I think I ate leaves at one point.” She laughed a little, “I can see why you thought it would be safe to poison me.  I have an iron stomach.”

Loki rocked back and forth slightly, his mouth pursed, his breath huffing through his nose, “You,” he did not look up but was clearly talking to the hag, “you gave the Queen amanita?  You gave her a deliriant and then let her run through an animal infested woodland alone, in that state, for a week? Knowing that she was already being hunted?” His voice rose, each word gaining volume and definition and fury, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”

Baba Yaga shrugged, “That she’s one tough little peasant.  If you can survive Eitr, and the fucking King, you can probably survive some bears and a little dirt.”

“It was a lot better than the eitr.  Even the hallucinations,” Nora said, eating a little more.  “You were there,” she added, pointing at him, “remember how much I raved, some of the things I saw?  And at least the mushrooms didn’t hurt. I wasn’t scared then. Of anything.”

Now he looked at Nora, “I didn’t poison you.  I would never harm you.”

The directness of the lie knocked the breath from her.  “Liar,” she managed to whisper out.

“I did not!  I tried to stop him.  I ripped myself out of him and I fought him.  It was-”

Nora threw the bowl at him.  He ducked and it broke against the far wall.

The cottage made a noise, and shifted with a squawking sound.    Baba Yaga t’sked at her. “Bad to waste food. You know this. Go clean it up and say you’re sorry to my poor house.”

“I’ll do it,” Loki said, starting to rise.

“You will sit,” Nora ordered.  “And until you are willing to admit that you poisoned me, no matter why you did it, or what you thought would happen, I don’t want to see you, or talk to you.  In fact, if you don’t admit it right now I want you to leave.”

He looked at her, stricken.

“You don’t have to go anywhere, pretty,” Baba Yaga said.  “I need more work done first.”

“My Queen, don’t send me from you,” he begged, forcing himself visibly to stay in his chair while she cleaned up the broken plate and the spilled food.  “I have nowhere to go.”

“Then now you know how I felt,” she said.

Baba Yaga stood up then, and grabbed Nora’s arm.  “You are being very spoiled right now, ordering people out of my home like you have rights.  Maybe you believe this being a queen business, even though we both know better, pig farmer. You don’t get to be a queen because someone gives you a crown.  You are only a queen if you make yourself one.”

“Well, I don’t want to be a queen.  I never wanted to be a queen! I just wanted -”

It was then that Nora realised that she couldn’t remember what she had wanted before Loki.  

There had to be something, hadn’t there?

She went outside to apologize to the cottage and try and sleep.

 

Loki laid by the fire in the quiet cottage.  Quiet other than the buildings own, soft snoring.

He thought of Nora, sleeping outside and forced himself to not get up and go to her so he might guard her though the night as he wanted, as he needed to.  She could not bear him being near. He brought with him too much unhappiness when she had found some peace here, but he could not stand leave her either. For all of the hag’s powers, the queen was not safe.  

She was still afraid.  He saw it in her eyes sometimes when she looked at him.

And that was more than he could tolerate. 

He  _ would  _ leave her.  Upon the morn, he would find a way to make himself say his goodbyes.  He would go into the forest and ...

What he would do after that he had no idea.

 

Rain poured from the eaves of the little shed that morning, but the roof was sturdier than Nora would have thought and she was perfectly dry.   Though she wasn’t cold, she had slept an old chemise she had found in one of the trunks, and now she pulled the blanket that Baba Yaga had granted her over her shoulders.  It felt right to be wrapped in a blanket, surrounded by the smell of fresh hay and the sound of rain, and to just sit and think of nothing.

The cool water striking the warming earth left a light haze, the sun coming out as the shower grew lighter, refracted and reflected everything with gold, and the fresh green from the surrounding forest glistened.  Even the damned goats were quiet that morning.

For just that moment, and for the first time in months, since she had first been told she had been chosen to be queen, Nora felt something like peace.  

Not happiness, but something close to it.  A little soft rain could cause wonders.

The cabin door opened and Nora pushed back a little, not wanting Baba Yaga to know she was awake yet.  Their words the night before had left her stinging and uncertain.

It wasn’t the witch.  It was Loki.

He stood on the porch, looking up at the light rain, and then walked down into it, his head back, his arms spread, the grey, ancient silk tunic that Baba Yaga had dug out of somewhere quickly drenched and useless for hiding anything.  His pale skin glowed through it. His muscles were even more obvious like that, his broad shoulders and the size of his chest. Like the earth, a light mist rose from him. He had probably been sleeping by the fireplace and his skin would be warm.

When he vigorously shook his head like a dog climbing out of a lake, sending spray everywhere, the homey gesture made her laugh.

Loki stopped and turned to look at her.  For just a second he started to smile at the sight of her or maybe was going to join her laughing, and then, also remembering the night before, his shoulders fell and he turned away, heading towards the goat pen.

“Stop!  I mean, um…” she stood up, the blanket pooling at her feet, and when he turned to look at her she knew how she must look to him with hay in her hair, her feet bare.  Hel, there were probably sleep creases on her face. 

Peasant.  Pleasant. Pleasant.

“I was hoping that we could -”

He started walking towards her, a strange, soft look on his face.

“-talk about last night.  I shouldn’t ha-”

He stopped her by kissing her.  He hadn’t learned his lesson the first time.  But it was tentative, with his hands at his sides, and his mouth just pressing her lips and nothing more.  The rain was cold upon them, but Nora could feel the heat roiling off of his body. 

This time the earth did not swallow him.

She stepped into the kiss, her mouth pushing up as she stood on her toes and could still barely reach him, her body pressing onto his.  

Moving slowly, like he might with a skittish animal, Loki put a huge hand behind her head, lacing his fingers through her messy hair, his other hand cupping her ass, lifting her a bit and settling her more firmly against him.  Nora put her hands on his chest, not to push away but to feel it. She slid them greedily over him, loving the hard planes of him beneath the wet fabric.

Gasping, Loki’s mouth opened and Nora plunged her tongue in.  He was so hot! Was this what the king had felt the first time he had kissed her?  This burning, deep pain, like when your hand gets too close to the steam spout of a kettle?  It was compelling and frightening in equal measure.

Then she thought of the king again, opening her eyes, pulling back.

“I can’t,” she said, pulling free.

He let her go quickly and then turned away, his shoulders stiff.  “Stop playing with me, Majesty. I am your servant but I won’t be your slave.”

“Won’t you?  Because I bet-” she tried to make a joke, tried to distance herself from the throbbing between her legs, from her need to pull him onto her, from wanting to forget everything but her body and his.  

“It is not a laughing matter,” he said, his voice choking and halting.  He touched his throat, as if it hurt. He frowned, shaking his head again, this time clearly trying to clear his thoughts.  Something was wrong, and not just what was happening between them.

At first she started towards him, wanting to touch his arm, see if she could help, but something about the stiffness in his back led her to believe it might be unwelcome.  

Nora wanted her haughty, imperious husband who understood everything about her, who set her on fire, who listened to her with care, and treated her with high-handed cruelty to make certain his vision of the future and saw it as good.  

Whose eyes glistened when she sang.

She wanted this gentle, kind man, who treated her like she was why the stars shone, who drew her towards him even though she pushed back, who had nursed her tirelessly, no matter what foulness her body had produced, and followed her through the forests when he had no idea where she was or if he would even find her.  

Who might cease to exist if she didn’t go to him, go  _ with  _ him.  

Whatever had been happening to him stopped suddenly.  His hand dropped limply from his throat and he looked towards the forest as if trying to see something on the other side of it.

“No, it isn’t.  I guess we are the only ones who don’t find this funny.  I know Baba Yaga does. And I’m sure the King does. I’m sorry that-” she said.

He walked quickly away.

“Wait!”  Nora kicked at the blanket that her feet had gotten tangled in and ran out of the shed.  He stopped walking but didn’t turn back. The thin fabric on his arm was cold and his arm was like something carved in iron beneath it, “I wanted to say I am sorry for last night, too.  I shouldn’t have said what I-”

He turned, his face dark with fury, and Nora took a step back before she knew she had done it.  Even like this he was strong enough, powerful enough, to do anything he wanted with her. He followed the same step, looming above her like a sudden winter storm, and grabbed her arms, “Never apologize to me,  _ álfadrottning...”  _ he said, his voice like a hiss.

The water that touched his skin turned to a suit of armor made of ice.  His short hair grew, falling in long locks to his shoulders, spilling like the rain down his back, across his chest.  

Nora stepped back again, and again he pursued.

“What have you done that deserves my forgiveness?”  His eyes fluttered closed, and his head rolled back, a soft, almost erotic groan slipping from his thin lips as the diamond tips of his horns pierced his heavy locks, and then slowly rose, coiling and twisting.  The rain washed away the blood, save for one rivulet that rolled down his forehead, then dangled from the thick lashes of his right eye, shivering there for a moment, before continuing and dripping off of his chin.  It, too, froze in place, a perfect ruby line adorning his face.

“Giving me your trust, your innocence, your companionship, your very life?  All terrible offences.” Starting from his wrists, long coils and whorls of dark blue unfurled across his skin as it turned the color of the early morning sky.  “Loving me? Worse, making me love you and then thinking that would be enough to ensure that you would safe in my keeping? That I would treat you as the precious, irreplaceable gift that you are?  How unforgivable. Running from me? Hiding and trying to sever that which binds us? No, I can never forgive any of it.”

He blinked and his eyes were the glowing red of sunset.

Nora’s back was against the wall of the shed.  The rough wood bit through the cotton of her chemise.  Her heart was beating too hard, and she expected it to burst through her ribs and out of a jagged hole in her chest.  She didn’t know what she felt. Fear? Elation? Something wilder for certain.

He caged her with his body, “Unlike you I am a coward, my little Queen.  I have not the courage to ask for a forgiveness that I know I would never receive, nor could never earn.”

They were surrounded by a cloud of steam as the sun touched him, touched her.  

Why wasn’t she cold?

“But that does not mean I will let you escape me again,” he said.  “I do not expect you to be my wife any longer, Nora. I have forfeited that right, but be my Queen.  Rule at my side and help me win Terra free from my father. I need you. So do your people. Do not delude yourself that it is for love of _ me  _ that they fight.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, her heart slowing down.  

“Not at all.  We have all been waiting for you for a long time.”  Loki stepped back, letting her have some space. He now used the tone that he used in council when being persuasive.  “You or someone like you. To inspire.” 

She snorted and started to walk back to the cabin.

“I don’t know how to be a queen.  Like Baba Yaga said. I don’t know what I could do.”

Loki cocked his head and gave her a slight smile, his eyes narrow with amusement.  “Trust me, it’s easier than herding goats,” he whispered in her ear, making her shiver.

“But I  _ don’t _ trust you,” Nora stood up more firmly.

“An excellent way start any partnership with me.  My Queen,” he said, walking past her, brushing his hand down her arm as he did.  “I will go chat with the witch about ending your contract early.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet!”

“You will.  Your people need you, you can’t help yourself.”

Just as he was about to duck his horns under the lintel of the doorway, Nora thought of something and called out again, “Wait!  How did I turn you back?”

“You did nothing.  My … other self was assassinated a few minutes ago.  We really must hurry.”

  
  



	19. I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them - Mark Twain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora head for home.

“Are you coming?”  

Nora couldn’t stop herself.

She snorted.  

When they had halted for a quick meal that afternoon, she had slipped her boots off to put her feet in the water for a few moments, and now he was up and walking before she had time to tug them back on, let alone lace them.  

Loki stopped and turned just his upper body to face her where she was still sitting on the fallen tree near the water.  “What is so amusing?”

His glowing eyes narrowed in a confused frown.  Then he figured it out and rolled his eyes in majestic annoyance.  “You are so childish at times, but then, you practically are a child.”

She looked back to her laces, “So what does that make you?” she muttered, finishing the knots and standing up, taking up her pack and the walking stick that Baba Yaga had insisted on giving her, even though she didn’t need it.  These days she rarely got tired, even working around the farm or hiking for miles in the forest. Still, sometimes a girl needed a stick.

Chernaya huffed and climbed to his hooves, clearly irked that his rest was over.  “You can just stay here. Maybe a bear will eat you,” she said to the goat. 

Not likely.  All of the smart animals in these woods were terrified of him.

Baba Yaga had insisted on Nora taking him.  Her temporary release from the witch’s geas/service contract had been contingent on her taking Chernaya with her.

“He’s a black furred, horned, and stubborn pain in my ass, and he likes you as much as he likes anything.  Other than fucking and ruining things. So, clearly he’s supposed to be yours. He goes with you or you stay, little thief.  Bring him back when he’s learned some manners. Or make curry out of him, I don’t care which,” she had said while packing Nora a bag of food and extra socks.  

“Come back within a year or I’ll come looking.  You don’t want that,” she said, pressing the stick into Nora’s hand, her voice sounding like something from the depths of a cave.

“If you aren’t dead!” B.Y. added with a laugh.  “And even then, maybe you come visit anyway?”

Now they both stood, stretching, to catch up with the king who had turned away from them with a shake of his head and started off, his long legs taking him almost out of sight so Nora had to run a bit to catch up.  

They had been traveling for over a week, sleeping rough and occasionally having to evade any humans they might pass in the wood, as well as Jotun patrols out looking for Nora.  He noted there were more than when he had been going in the other direction. 

When she asked him, trying to act like it was normal conversation, Loki refused give any real answer about what he had been talking about when he had told her he, or rather his other self, had been assassinated.  

“What does that even mean?” she had asked.  “And how do you look like, like you were looking before?  What exactly is going on?”

“Seidr, little queen.  Things that you would not understand and that I currently lack the time to teach you in any meaningful way.  Let us just say that I have more secrets from you - and most everyone else for that matter - than otherwise. And you are not yet clever and experienced enough to understand.  These matters touch on several of them.”

“So the answer is ‘magic’ and ‘not going to tell you’?”

He clearly caught a sigh and killed it before it could slip from his mouth.  “Yes.”

Another time he had asked her about how she had met up with the Resistance, since he knew it had to for their sake she had released his prisoner.

It was her turn not to answer, other than to say, “It doesn't matter.  But I liked Clulann. A lot,” she added as a pitiful bit of defiance.

“Of course you did.  He’s every little Midgardian’s grandfather, telling them heroic bedtime stories.”

“I think he liked me too,” she added, defiantly.

“Of course he did.  Stiofan is an excellent judge of character.”

Nora ignored the compliment and they hadn’t talked the rest of the day beyond what they were forced to say.

But now, bored and feeling tired, she decided to try again as the day waned around them, “If you were assassinated won’t it be strange for you to show up?”

“Ceorl has standing instructions for what should happen if one of my … clones is to die.  It is not optimal, particularly in time of war, but my reputation for eccentricity can be useful at times like this.  If I should suddenly decide to retreat to my chamber with my queen, who has been in seclusion for her own safety, who would gainsay me?”

“Is THAT the story?  That’s your hiding me to keep me safe?  From who? I mean your father, clearly, but isn’t the whole castle meant to be safe from him?”

“The Resistance, of course.  After they attempted to kidnap you, whilst also failing to secure the escape of one of their most dangerous members from my Oubliette.”

“Dangerous? When I ACTUALLY secured his escape he seemed really sweet,” she said, throwing a handful of nuts into the bushes to distract Chernaya from trying to eat the tails of the very old coat Baba Yaga had given her.

He shrugged, “He is also that.  Weide is a man of complexity. But trust me when I say that you were in greater danger in those moments, of horrors, than you have been at any other moment in your life,” he looked down at her, his face and tone placid, his eyes haunted.  “ _ Any  _ other moment.  No matter if you trust me or not.”  Steam rolled from around his shoulders and horns, as if something about the thoughts he was having was making him run hot.

They continued in silence for some time, until it started to grow dark.  “When I was searching for you I found an abandoned farm not far from here.  The house is a ruin, but the barn was well constructed. Perhaps we would both enjoy sleeping away from the moon’s prying gaze for the night.  There may even be some alfalfa still growing in the area for your beast to gorge himself on.”

It was nearly full dark when they had found the old farm.  Even though the roof of the barn was thatched it was still intact, which Nora, as a farmer, declared impossible.  “That needs to be kept up, on the regular or they just rot and fall in. Looking at the house no one has been here for a year, no, more than that.  It's hard to tell. It stays cold so long there isn’t as much time for the wet to swell the wood, but still.”

She dropped her pack and turned, staring at the roof above them, shaking her head.  It was really well made, the thatches perfectly laid out, the walls still tight. The king, not interested in peasant architecture, took a knee to start a small fire in an already existing pit just within the barn doors.  He must had slept there when he found it before.

“Strictly speaking, we are still within your friend the witch’s demesne, so perhaps her power has something to do with it,” he said, pouring water into a small pot, and settling back to wait for it to boil.

“How do you know how to do all of that stuff?  Get by in the woods and cook and make fires not using magic?  Or are those more secrets you won’t tell me?” Nora asked, taking some - perfectly safe - dried mushrooms, salt, and, tragically, buckwheat out of her sack for the meal, while Loki skinned and dressed a huge hare he had easily killed with a swiftly tossed knife that morning.  “And the hunting?”

“When I lived on Asgard, as I  _ had _ told you about, Prince Thor and I often went hunting.  No servants, just us and perhaps some of his cohorts. Previously to that, it often amused my father to send me out onto the high ice to teach me about traditional Jotun culture.  Particularly the part that involved hoping your disappointing young will freeze to death, or starve. Or fall into a fjord and drown, or crevasse and perhaps be eaten by the dragons that you are dearly hoping still dwell within.”

“How could you freeze?”

He looked up at her, his eyes glowing in the firelight, a thin, sly smile on his lips, “You know so little of our kind.  Our skin is cold, but our blood is warm. Our children are as tender as your kind - well, not perhaps that much - but are still fragile.”

Chernaya, having found a patch of something to eat in one of the overgrown fields that the forest was slowly reclaiming, went off into the dark to woo one of those frightening deer or do whatever other horrible thing he might do without an audience.

The food was, as always, surprisingly good.  Not that it should be a surprise. The king refused to do anything he wasn’t good at.

After they finished eating, Nora carefully put out the fire and laid out a blanket to lay on.  Loki had pulled out a small, leather-bound book, and was writing something within. She curled up, facing him and waited, like she forced herself to do every night no matter how tired she was, to stay awake until he went to sleep.

Not looking up, he spoke, “I had hoped tonight that you might allow yourself some proper rest, being we are indoors.”

“I’m not that tired.”

“But you will be.  You are so strong, but we all need sleep eventually, even I.”

“It’s not being outside that keeps me awake, it’s-” 

She stopped herself, not knowing why she wanted to spare his feelings, but wanting to anyway.  It hadn’t been bad being with him. During the day. He would tell her about the trees and the fish in the river.  About what different plants could do and how they were like those on other worlds. And about those worlds. 

But at night.

At night when it was quiet and she could hear everything, she was afraid.  Even knowing that it made no sense, that he would have no reason to kill or even harm her in these woods.  But then, she would think, what if he did? What if her corpse, being less trouble and knowing less about his plots and plans, could serve him just as well?  Hadn’t she thought that before?

“It is me.”  

“Yes.”

With the speed that she still couldn’t understand he stood and then she was standing, his hand on her chin, his eyes on hers.  “Nora, I will swear to you by anything you like that I will not harm you ever again. That, rather, I will do all that is in my power to see you never know harm of any kind again.”  

They were so close.

She dropped her eyes.   He was too close like this.  His eyes. His mouth. His fangs.

“Please…” he whispered.  

“How can you swear by something when you don’t hold anything sacred?” she asked.  

He let her go with the very gentlest of shoves.  “Alas, like many I have discovered that which I consider divine after I committed my desecration upon it.”

Nora curled up again, this time with her back to him and slept.

 

The next morning, Nora woke abruptly, sitting up.  Whatever she had been dreaming had been…

It hadn’t been a nightmare.

But it had been disturbing.  Intimate. Intrusive. Her sleeping self helpless against everything she had pushed away, so deeply had she been asleep.

There was a smell of coffee, and Loki was rinsing his hair with something that smelled like pine and, weirdly, roses.  After, he combed his fingers through it, leaving it perfectly dry and smooth as it fell down his back.

Pouring herself a cup, she pointed at him, “I wouldn’t mind being able to do that.”

“You can, of course,” he said, taking up his own coffee, blowing on it to render it a cold drink.

What?

Before she could say anything there was a scraping at the barn door.  “Stupid animal,” she grumbled, getting up and opening the smaller door within the larger one to let Chernaya in.

The curly haired, rather burly man standing outside of the barn was as surprised to see her as she was to see him.  

But not so surprised that he didn’t raise his gun.

Nora’s hands shot up, showing him she was unarmed, even as she stepped to the side a bit, praying he wouldn’t see Loki.  “Um, sorry, is this your barn?” she asked, suddenly aware of how strong her Olameca accent was. 

“What?”

“That’s what I usually say,” she said.

From behind him she heard, “Igor?  Is there a problem?”

A skinny fellow with improbably red hair - genuinely red like an apple - was closing up his pants from where he had been peeing in the woods.  He also had a gun, a rifle, she guessed. There were so few guns back home she had never learned much about them. 

“There’s a girl in the barn.”

“Really?”  The other man sounded gleefully eager, high-legging it through the undergrowth over to them, smiling in a gratified way.  “Oh, a preeettty girl,” he said with a playful leer. “Hello pretty girl, pretty little girl.”

His friend rolled his eyes fondly.  “Oleg,” he lightly swatted his friend’s stomach with the back of his hand, “don’t scare her.”

Nora wasn’t scared.  Not of them. Maybe for them, thinking of Loki.

“Not my barn, pretty girl,” the one called Igor said.  “We were just hoping for a place to nap for a few hours.  Patrol around here is boring.”

He said that like she should understand what he meant, so she pretended to.  “Yeah, so boring. Like filling slops. You have to, but who wants to?”

“Exactly!” Oleg said, while Igor nodded.

“You know,” Igor said, “I am guessing you are from the castle?  A servant or something? You’re lucky to get away, with the -”

At the same time, Oleg was saying, his eyes narrow as he studied her face, “You know, you look a lot like-”

“The Queen?” came a voice from behind her.  Deep, soft, dark, familiar.

But now with a decidedly Rus accent.

Long, pale, unmarked arms wrapped around her stomach, and she felt herself pulled against a warm, linen covered chest.  Loki rested his chin gently on her head, his long hair falling over her shoulders. “Everyone at the castle noted it too,” he said fondly, nuzzling her hair.  She could feel his smile. “It’s why I stole her out of the kitchen. I might not be a king anywhere else, but I can be one in bed, can’t I,  _ malen'kaya koroleva _ ?”

Tilting her head back she saw a fond smile that didn’t quite reach his green eyes.  He was clearly hoping to get them to leave but was prepared for trouble.

“True,  _ Moy korol _ ,” she said, half-turning to cuddle against him, her heart pounding hard enough to make her sick.  Please let them leave, please let them leave, she repeated in her head over and over, terrified for the two pleasant, if confusing men.

This time, she kissed him.

Standing on her bare toes she could just barely touch her lips to his.

The arm around her scooped her up, just a bit, just so her toes were no longer touching the earth, so he bent over her, hiding her from the low whistle from Oleg and the sound of Igor’s hand clapping Loki on the shoulder.  

Stealing just a touch of her breath.  

Her stealing just a touch of his to replace it.

He set her down with great care and her toes curled in the dust at the way he looked at her.  Now she hid herself against his tunic, feeling a blush spread over her, feeling his lungs working harder than normal, and the slight shake in his arm as he fought not to crush her.

Grinning like a proud idiot, Loki extended a hand, “Maxim.  I was a physician at the castle until the war started. But now … well, I wanted to take my girl to her grandmother’s, so she would be safe.”

The men shook their heads, “These woods aren’t safe, not after what happened, not if you’re unarmed.”

Loki shrugged, moving her to his side, but keeping an arm around her, “Normally, yes, but my girl’s grandmother is … let us just say that anyone close to her isn’t going to get hurt in  _ these  _ woods -”

“Grandma isn’t so bad,” Nora objected, “now her goats...”

The men looked at each other, then at Nora, then at Chernaya who had trotted up, a mouthful of red flowers being thoughtfully chewed, his uncanny eyes taking flicking back and forth between them as he forced his horns under Nora’s hand for a scratch.

“Baba Yaga…” the one named Oleg said, making the “Коза” at the same time.  Igor stared at him and then did the same.

“Oh, you know her?” Nora asked innocently.

Blink and they were gone.

“Good beast,” Loki rumbled down at the goat.  

“Are you ever going to show me how you do that?” she asked, touching the place on his head where his horns should be.

Abruptly, they were back, his transition much quicker than last time, and her hand now wrapped around one of the tall, ridged spikes.  

Loki raised an eyebrow at her.  “Why, your majesty! That is quite forward of you,” he said, pretending to be scandalised.

Nora burst out laughing.

They finished their breakfast, trying not to to be caught stealing glances at each other and got back on the road.  

“Why were those men armed?” she remembered to ask eventually.

He shook his head, “I do not know.  I hate not knowing things. Let us get home,  _ álfadrottning. _ ”  Then, crouching down, he added, “Climb up, it will be quicker if I can run.  Let us hope your pet is as nimble as he is irritating.”

After less hesitation than she wanted to show, Nora put her arms around his neck, locked her knees to his lean sides, and let him secure her with his arms.

He moved through the trees like a creature born there, and was so fast it was like flying.  Her hair fell out of its braid and her skin tingled and she had not been so happy in so very long.

Nora held tight, and when her breath returned, she sang. 

Just a few lines.  

But he could hear her, above the wind.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Igor and Oleg are a tribute to one of my favorite live bands of all time - The Red Elvises, who my dear aunt_deen an I used to travel around the country to see when we and the world were young.  
> Here is one of my favorites - Drinking with Jesus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUOBR21Uo_4


	20. We Are Only Ourselves in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora are in a cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurricanerin just updated her brilliant story, I'll Never Tell, which is a very different and amazing view of JotunLoki.   
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/13157154/chapters/30091233

Even for one as disciplined as Loki it was neither easy nor pleasant to run whilst achingly erect.

Were it not for how perfectly his leather trews were tailored it would be a battle betwixt the jarring and the chafing as to which was more uncomfortable.  As it was, he was simply, perpetually aware of the posture he needed to keep in order to not cause himself harm.

That, along with the self-inflicted torment of Nora’s thighs gripping his sides, her hands fisted in his shirt, her breasts pressed firmly, and yet still moving about, against his back, her breath warm on his neck, in his ear, against his cheek, her voice wrapped about them, caused him to regret the need to make up time.  

He had indulged himself in a slow journey this last week.  Making up for time apart from Nora, although that too had been a torment.  To walk with her, talking or in silence, her obnoxious pet/familiar making a nuisance of himself, giving the illusion of their past amity between them.  Simply and peacefully being with her as a normal, Midgardian couple might be. 

Save for the utter lack of physical contact.  He had noted that humans and Asgardians, some of them at any rate, held hands with their lovers.  It had seemed a puerile and pointless affectation. A child’s projection of ownership, of being owned.  Innocent and silly, yet harmless, he supposed. 

He would rather have liked to held her hand as they walked.  Just to see what it was like.

However eager she had been when he kissed her when in his Asgardian form - a form which he had never been able to easily call in the past but could now slip in to as simply as he might a worn pair of boots - the moment he was himself again she shied away from even an accidental brush of arm to shoulder.  

Knowing that he was much more beautiful as a Jotun, knowing that she had desired him long before they met, simply drove home to him again and again how afraid she was.

That she had agreed to climb upon him so they might make haste was a tribute to Nora’s bravery and understanding of Loki.  That he would never have done such an undignified thing were he not certain that something was more than merely wrong. 

So it made him feel… something, that she was so clearly delighted in their haste!  Her mouth near his ear was smiling as she sang.

“How long can you keep running like this?” she asked, slightly out of breath from both singing and being bounced along.

Which made matters worse for him, cock-wise.  

So did the smell of her body, which she had not washed properly in some time but smelled like sun warmed earth rather than simply the normal odor of unwashed Midgardian.  Her hair, too, was redolent of oil and dirt. 

With an overlay of Chernaya’s stink on her clothing.

It was not normal for her to smell as she did.  He suspected that her stubborn mind and spirit had somehow molded and reshaped the alien magic he had marked her with and turned its power into something new and all her own.

Or so he hoped.  Even if he envisioned her often using it against him, he would rather that she had her own defenses.  Loki would have to figure out a gentle way to explain to her what he suspected was happening with her, one that would not upset Nora’s balance too greatly.  As he knew from his own personal history, unused and unrecognised magic could be dangerous to the possessor of it.

It was always dangerous to those around them.

As to the other matter, she certainly did not smell bad.  To him at least. But she would probably prefer to be clean.

He needed to cease allowing himself to long for her like this!  There were more important matters that demanded his attentions, not merely for the sake of his new planetary order, but for their safety. Those humans feeling the need to patrol that close to what should be a safe zone - being so near to the castle - was discomfiting.  

If matters at their home were not roughly as Loki had left them - the recent assassination of his clone self notwithstanding - then it could be hazardous to take Nora back there.  

Or himself for that matter, but he had to know.  As much as he wanted her with him, Loki wondered if he should have left his queen with Baba Yaga.  The witch was powerful enough anywhere, but in her own demesne no force could touch her. Even he had simply let her be, the two of them having detente that had been come to in silence.    

Nora gently pulled a lock of his hair, “I said-”

“I can run a full day without rest.  It will take two such for us to return home, so we will have to find a safe place to sleep.  Fortunately we will be back in the mountains soon and I know of a number of caves there.”

“I’ve never slept in a cave,” she said.  “I can’t say that I’m all that excited about it.”

“I have.  You are quite correct not to be, even if you have slept in a shed, more than one barn, and under a number of trees.  Although the one I am thinking of has an extra amenity that those other accommodations have lacked.” Maybe eliminating some of her intense scent would grant his poor phallus some rest.

 

Nora found herself singing again as she gleefully took off the clothes she had been wearing for days.  She had tried her best to keep clean, but since Loki had refused to leave her alone for any length of time she had not been willing to strip down all of the way when she had gotten in the river.  Rather, she just waded in still wearing her shirt and pants.

Consequently her clothing was usually damp and she never felt clean.  The last few days she had just given up, figuring that she wanted to keep the fastidious king at a distance anyway and smelling of sweat and billy goat would probably do it.  

But when he had shown her the hot spring in the cave, deep within the mountain Nora wanted to cry or cheer.  It bubbled from within the earth, the salty froth on the edges of it glowed faintly in the little bit of light that made it that far into the cave.

“Here,” Loki had raised a hand, and on it formed a ball of golden light.  With a soft toss it hovered in the air over the water. Then another and another, until the space was gently illuminated.

“Do not stay in too long at a time,” he said, putting a water skin near to the brink of the spring.  “The heat and the minerals are healthy, but in small doses. If you wish to stay here for a time take breaks and drink readily.”  

Then he left her alone for the first time in days.  

_ “ _ _ Come my friends and dear companions, _ __   
_ Come and run away with me; _ __   
_ For I have lost my own dearest jewel, _ __   
_ Clothed in mourning I must be. _ __   
__   
_ When I'm asleep I'm dreaming about him, _ __   
_ When I'm awake I take no rest, _ __   
_ Must I cross the wide, cruel ocean, _ _   
_ __ To see the one that I love best.”

It took a bit to get her socks off, which was was not only disgusting, but made her feel like a hick.  Not that hicks were especially dirty, but everyone thought so. Eventually she tossed all of the clothes she had been wearing in a corner, except her coat and boots, and planned to leave it there.

Chernaya wandered over, grabbed her bandeau and walked off slowly chewing it.

Nora was naked and couldn’t chase him, but she did wing a rock over his head that he ignored.

The water was so hot and almost silky, smelling of salt and iron from deep in the rocks.  The burn of her toes wasn’t terrible, it was wonderful. 

Hoping it was deep enough, she jumped in.

_ “His eyes are as red as the reddest rose _ __   
_ Cheeks as blue as crystal sky _ __   
_ Hair as black as any raven  _ _   
_ __ And o'er his forehead hangs in curls.”

More than deep enough, Nora plunged down and down into a white darkness.  It was blazingly hot, and her eyes were stinging from the salt. With two powerful - surprisingly powerful - scissor kicks she was back to the surface, laughing.  For a few moments she just treaded water, feeling as if she could dissolve into the satiny heat.  __   
__   
_ “I wish I had never seen him, _ __   
_ Never took me by my lily-white hand, _ __   
_ But now he's gained my heart's devotion, _ _   
_ __ Now I lie at his own command.”

Eventually, she grew lax enough that she made her way to where some rocks beneath the surface made a kind of seat for her.  It was odd, because she was surprised she hadn’t hit them when she first jumped in.

There was a pumice stone in the pack Baba Yaga had given Nora, so she took that to her feet, knees, and elbows, but not too hard.  When she had walked through the woods after leaving the castle Nora had been amazed to get blisters. The pain had actually worked its way through the haze of nothingness she had felt in those first days.

Months of soft living had left her feet as nearly tender as a rich girl’s.  But working with the goats and in the garden, and now travelling again, had given her back most of her defenses.  She could probably walk on the fire Loki had laid for them and hardly feel it. 

_ “Ripest of apples soon will grow rotten,  _ __   
_ Warmest of love will soon grow cold,  _ __   
_ Young men's vows are soon be forgotten; _ _   
_ __ Say, pretty girl, don't be controlled.”

After, she took a handful of soft, lye smelling soap and washed the rest of her body and her hair.  

Even wet it felt coarse and tangled.  Nora was happy to have her calluses back, not just the ones on her feet, but on her hands and knees as well, but she missed having nice hair that smelled good.  Or at least smooth hair. 

It felt strange to know that she had gotten vain at some point.  

“Um… Loki?”  She called out very softly, half hoping he wouldn’t hear her and she could pretend she hadn’t said anything.

“Is something wrong?”  Nora heard him softly walking towards her, his voice alert.  

Damn.

“No!  Nothing’s wrong.  I just wanted to know… um… do you have any of that stuff you put on your hair?  That you made in the forest?”

There were a few moments of silence, then, “I do.  Would you care to use some?” He sounded very formal.

“If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

Nora sank farther into the water, her body feeling soft from the heat and salt, but her mind was tense from asking him for something.  Something that he would have to bring right up to her. While she was naked. And wet. And knowing how much he liked to watch her bathe, once she had gotten the hang of taking a bath as opposed to  _ bathing _ .

That she wanted him nearby was also a problem.

When he came back, Loki had removed his own boots and was carrying a bottle filled with green liquid. He went to one knee next to the edge of the spring, “Lean your head back.”  

For a second she balked, thinking that she would tell him to just leave the stuff and her, but then she also didn’t want to.  It helped that the heat from the spring and the cold from his body had sent up clouds of steam and he was a shadow within them.

She did so, her eyes closed.

The liquid was cool, almost cold compared to the heat of the water and she shivered.  “Apologies,” he said softly, and it turned warm. 

The smell of pine and something not quite like a rose wafted on the heavy, humid air.  

He touched her hair, and made a sound of surprise.  “Something wrong?”

After a few moments of quiet, he answered, “No.  I was simply expecting more… it is not as hot as I feared.”

“It feels pretty hot from in here.”

Long fingers worked through her hair, taking out tangles painlessly through magic and particular care.

Another rinse, and more smoothing.

Nora felt like she could go to sleep.  Which would be bad.

She might drown.

Or she might wake up in her blankets.

She felt comfortable with him touching her, maybe because she could only feel him and not see him.  Or that she knew in a way it was pointless to be afraid of him. All of the diligence in the world wouldn’t keep her safe if he were to take it into his head again to harm her.

Maybe because just enough time had passed and the fear had softened around the edges, so it didn’t cut, but just abraded a bit on the places that were still sore.

“I should probably get out for a while.  Like you said,” she sunk a little further into the water and turned to face him, “a little goes a long way.”

He recapped the bottle, looking at it and not her.  “Of course,” he started to rise.

Nora took a deep breath, and then decided.  “Would you give me a hand. I’m almost too… you know to get out.”  Which was a lie and wasn’t at the same time.

Still not looking up, he spoke, “I am  _ desperate _ to win your favor again, even if that is not possible.  I want your trust. I want you not merely as my queen, but as my wife,” he looked up, his eyes narrow as if he was afraid they would show too much, “as my friend.  In my bed. In all lecherous honesty that more than the rest at this very moment. So I am attempting to… behave myself with you, because I acted like a treacherous brute the last time we were together.  Overwhelming you. Discounting how afraid and lost you were. Please, do not test me too far. I do not trust me, either.”

Nora thought about it.

“So you don’t think you can help me out of the water without turning into a ravenous beast and seducing me here on the floor of this cave?”

He frowned at her, “Of course I can.  I am simply asking you not to,” he rolled his eyes, embarrassed for himself, “tease me further.  Like at Baba Yaga’s.”

“Then help me out,” she said.

Loki ignored the hand she offered him and instead plunged his arms into the hot water, lifting her out in a massive wave that left him nearly as wet as she was.  His arms and face were flushed to dark indigo, the marks on his skin almost black. 

He set her down quickly and found a cloth in her pack for her to dry herself, “I’ll leave you to it.  Dinner will be in an hour or so. That deer your pet monster killed is tough.”

“Wait,” she put a hand on his arm, and saw his muscles lock.  

“Please...”  He closed his eyes but didn’t move.

He had said it to her twice.  

Please.

“Are you sorry?”  She asked him.

“What?”  He spoke slowly, confused.  It was sort of cute in his deep, sonorous voice, which Nora knew he would hate and it made her very happy.

Now he sounded like her. 

“Are you sorry for what you did?  For poisoning me? I know… No. I  _ believe _ that you meant what you said, that you were certain it wouldn’t kill me.  For whatever reason. But are you sorry you did it? That you hurt me?”

Loki’s eyes opened, glowing in the misty, golden light, and he inhaled, a sharp sound, as he stepped back from her.  “How could you -, you must know-, you must. How could you not know?” There was hurt and shock in his voice. He sounded like the tender, sweet, green-eyed man from Baba Yaga’s farm and nothing like her restrained and ironic king.

Somehow  _ she _ had wounded  _ him _ .

Nora felt how naked she was.  Snatching the forgotten cloth from him, turning away to dry off, “Because you never said you were sorry.  Never. You said all sorts of other things. That you would never really put me in danger. That you wanted me.  That you needed me. But never that you-”

“I am sorry.  And I beg you to forgive me.”

Loki’s voice was solemn, even defeated, like it was dressing mourning.  

“What I did to you I did from the rankest cowardice.  I have never apologised in my life, even at other times when it was clearly warranted.  But I have never been willing to show that I cared enough for another to do so. Jotuns do NOT apologize!  We take, we harm, and we laugh about it. 

“I did what I did to you for the reasons I told you, but just as much I did it to prove to myself that I could and would sacrifice anything to achieve my ends.  That for however much I loved you, I would never put anything above my goals. I was wrong, and deluded. Harming you tore me in half. Your... agreeing to accompany me has put me back together more thoroughly than ever before.”

“I thought that was the assassination,” she muttered, again unable to stop herself.

Someday she was going to get in real trouble with that kind of thing.  She probably already had. 

He half laughed, “Well, yes, literally in that case.  But for the first time I feel that I am no longer the King of Midgard hiding Loki and his weaknesses and frivolity and feelings beneath layers of arrogance and assurance and ruthlessness.  I am all of those things for the first time. I love you so terribly, you are a treasure and my companion in the dark. And this is what I have done to you out of fear.”

Nora finished drying herself as she listened.  It was easier than just standing there. 

Plus, she was slightly cold standing there.

“Well, you still should have,” she turned to him.  He was carefully not looking at her, and was still flushed.  “I forgive you.”

Now he looked at her, frowning.

“What?”

There it was again, her word, her perpetual lack of understanding at everything around her coming from the mouth of the king.  

Damned if it  _ wasn’t  _ cute.

“I don’t think you have probably ever looked as confused in your life as you do now.  I forgive you. I,” she pointed at her chest, “forgive you.” She placed her hand flat on his chest.  “But never do-”

He felt warm to her.

What?

Startled, she pulled her hand back, but before she could say anything Loki grabbed that hand and pulled her hard against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, resting his cheek on her now dry and silken hair, “Thank you… my  _ álfadrottning,  _ thankyouthankyouthankyou…”

He was  _ warm _ .  He was almost burning.

“Are, hey, let me go a second.  Are you ok? You’re so hot.”

He smiled down at her, “And to me you feel like a sylph carved from ice.”

“Why?”

At least that was a new one.

He took her hand and raised it, “Because Baba Yaga is as good of a liar as she is a witch.  And she is a  _ brilliant _ witch.  Look…” Pursing his thin lips, he blew across her arm.  

Starting at the wrist a long and coiling line of heat spread up her arm, to her shoulder, her neck, down the other arm, across her breasts and stomach, her back and ass, between (making her start a little and flush with desire) and then down her legs, finishing at the tops of her feet.  

Loki’s marks. But not blue.

Rather, ever so faintly green. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Nora sings is a traditional ballad called The Ripest of Apples. This version by Anna & Elizabeth-  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIuePqMGflQ


	21. What Can I Say After I Say ‘I’m Sorry’?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One chapter before returning to our regularly scheduled war.

Nora pulled free of his arms and backed away.  “What did she do to me?” she asked, holding her arm up to the light, turning it from side to side as she examined the marks, her voice wondering.  

For a moment pain lanced through Loki’s chest, until he realized she was not horrified or expressing rejection but was merely, clearly surprised and trying to get a clearer view of the alterations upon her skin.  

“She simply covered them over.  It is, as far as I know, impossible to remove mate markings when they are placed.  They can be overwritten if one’s mate dies and another is taken, but nothing more. An illusion making them appear to be gone would be child’s play to one of Baba Yaga’s skills.  So for little more than the price of some mud and chanting, she was going to have you as a servant for however long you contracted for.”

Her hands found her hips as her bright eyes narrowed, “That old bitch!”

“I would not call her so to her face, correct though you may be.  Um,” Loki found himself staring at where Nora’s fists dug into the flesh at her hips, at the curve of her strong, inner thigh and the dark shadow where her sex hid behind tiny curls, “you are aware that you are still naked, are you not?”

As he spoke he was able, with heroic effort, to raise his gaze to her face with only the barest of stops to discreetly ogle her breasts.  

Her nipples were peaked even in the relative warmth that came from the hot spring. So pretty a shade of brown and pink.  The now darkening, bottle green of his marks coiled and writhed around them, begging for his tongue to join their dance. 

“Oh damn…”  Sadly, yet thankfully, she hurried to her pack and pulled out a long shirt and an old pair of men’s work pants and dressed, then sat cross legged on the ground.  She pulled out a brush and started to apparently work snarls back into her hair as she seemed to be attacking herself with the grooming implement rather than using it for its intended purpose.

As she maimed herself,  Nora asked, “But why are they green?  Why would Baba Yaga change them and then hide them like that?”

“My guess is - here, give me that, it’s agony to watch - and it is but a guess, is that they changed themselves.  You are not a Jotunn, so when you rejected me and then went through what was not unlike some shamanic initiations, though you knew it not, the marks are now connected to your world rather than mine.”

“What?”  Her confusion was endearing as ever.  

Loki smiled to himself, slowly running the brush though her hair.  

“Do you know how most magic, be it seidr or some inherent quality, is derived?”

She turned her head as far as she could while he was holding her hair, so to more effectively roll her eyes at him, “Sure.  EVERYONE on Terra knows  _ that. _ ”

Ignoring her heavily sardonic tone, he continued his lesson and the brushing.

“Almost always through a connection with a given world.  The more powerful the person and the more powerful world, the more they can draw upon.  For instance, because of the massive amounts of magic that holds together Asgard, the AllFather and those of his blood are essentially gods.  It is why Laufey forced King Odin into the Odinsleep, and his heir, Hela, into a pocket reality. In the long run they would have risen up, no matter how brutally their world was occupied.  Queen Frigga is not Aesir, so she cannot take the power, and as long as the other two are alive neither can Thor completely.

“My father killed the entire Light Elf royal line in one bloody night.  Any being with but a drop of royal blood was slain. Because elves are so conjoined with their world that even the littlest regality would be enough to make a peasant their new king.  On Svartálfheim he encased Malekith the Cursed in a tomb of living light, knowing that the lack of dark would leave him weak as a babe and his people would be unable to free him. He made peace with the dwarves alone because he needs their talents and powers in place if he wants new weapons.  Only Sutur has managed to hold out against him because of the nature and breadth of his powers, but at massive cost to both sides.”

Setting the brush to the side, Loki sat as well, carefully taking her arm so he did not touch any of her marks unbidden, “When you ordered the ground to try and devour me, had I been fully myself I might have realised then what was happening.  You are quite powerful, Your Majesty. There are far fewer creatures gifted with a connection to Midgar - to  _ Terra, _ than there are on most other worlds, so there is a great deal of energy laying around unused.”  

He turned her hand over and gently pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist where there was no green, only a delicate tracery of veins that he could faintly feel the flow of her blood within.

“I thought… I don’t know what I thought… _ I  _ did that?  I could have killed you.  It would have killed a normal person, if Baba Yaga hadn’t stopped it.  Right?” She shivered at the thought, he stroked her hair, feeling her distress and not knowing how else to offer comfort.  Loki had always desired power and more power, and the safety it offered, but even he knew congratulating her at the moment would not be helpful.

“Possibly.  But you would not have done something so violent to one undeserving of your ire.”

“So do you get your power from Jotunheim?”  Unconsciously she was running her fingers idly over the marks on her still bare ankles and the tops of her feet, her lips slightly wet.  

It would be so simple to lift her leg and -

“No.  Or, that is to say I derive the same power that all of the royal family do.  My strength, my speed, my constitution, the ability to make weapons of ice that are as hard as well-forged metal.  But almost no Jotunns have actual seidr. We are so weak in those powers that my father must use a relic - the Casket of Ancient Winters - to truly draw on our Realm’s power.  But his connection to it is such that in his hands it is a thing of nightmares. Once as a boy I saw him freeze an entire city on a world that he wanted for some reason long since forgotten.  Millions of people, trapped under the ice. Still alive.

“And then he had his warband smash it to pieces...”  

He had been a boy and proud that his father was choosing to take him to war.  Laufey, attempting that one time to connect with his strange child had stood Loki beside him when he crested the hillside above the bright, pretty city, where it’s delicate, winged citizens flitted from aerie to aerie atop buildings that looked like trees.  

The wave of ice took some of them in mid-flight.  Their fine bones snapped under the weight of the ice as they tried to claw at the air, hoping that they could pull themselves into the sky.

After, following his father down to the vast mound of ice as the warband rode through, Loki saw bits of ice that were actually flesh and bone and wing, flying in a cloud as the Jotunn army pulverized everything to a fine snow.   

He had vomited and his father had sent him home in disgust.  It was the last time he had been at his father’s side. From that point on his position was in front of the Emperor.  Usually being punished.

“My seidr, like my shapeshifting, my clones, my size, even my markings, are all… abnormal.  Signs of my ‘perverse and weak nature,’ and so on and so forth. I draw my power from the places between the Realms, or at least that is how it seems.  That was Queen Frigga’s speculation when I was on Asgard, but she could never be certain.”

Nora put her hand on his face, touching his cheek, cupping his chin, stroking his neck.  Her fingers were like ice. Loki felt his eyes roll back and he leaned into her like an ecstatic cat, “So why do you feel warm to me?”

“I suspect,” he muttered, putting an arm about her waist and pulling her to him, so she was between his legs, her back resting on him.  “Our magics are… conspiring to make us more comfortable when we touch. So we shall wish to more often.”

For a moment she stiffened at his claiming the intimacy.  Loki kept his hold loose, so she knew that she could slip away from him with no effort.  That he would not use his strength to enforce his will upon her. After a moment of hesitation Nora settled back against him and he could feel each muscle in her back and arms relax, one by one, as she made up her mind to stay.

His eyes closed and his head fell back against the cave wall.  

He could barely contain himself.  The delicious cold of her body made the markings on his own swell and almost hurt.  Like they would burst if they could.

And he knew Nora had to be aware of his urgency as it pressed into the small of her back.

When he had been a boy in the throes of his first love affair - the one with himself - he had learned everything he could about the erotic possibilities of his markings when treated with the proper attentions.  After having dispensed with his urgent needs - with a feeling that was at that age not so much pleasure as just a near painful relief - he knew there had to be more than that mere release and quickly spent joy. 

His hands would wander over his chest, his stomach, a finger following the course of his strange marks as they grew hard and sensitive and unbearable.  He shivered and moaned, and gave himself for no rest for months it seemed. Alone, as ever, Loki had a great deal of time to learn everything about himself, or at least about his body.  

It was the first lesson he had learned in lust, and when a servant girl in the palace dared to tease him - for playing cruelly with the emperor’s misbegotten son was a favorite past-time of the underlings, from bullying when he was younger to improprieties leaving him flushed and feeling soiled when he was older - he had taught her what he had learned. 

Until she begged him to stop. 

And then, for nights after, begged him to start again.

He had refused.

It had been his first lesson in pleasure and the power of giving and withholding.  

Before, after Nora had been healed from his now unimaginable crime, Loki had only just begun to show her the possibilities that her new markings had opened to her.  Now he was curious how the changes to them might affect what she felt. 

What he would feel when…

With just the very tips of his fingers he followed the scrolls of subtly raised flesh.    

A soft, dark pulse, like the beat of Nora’s heart, like the pull of her cunt when he was in her, like the sound of a small, steady wave, moved up his fingertips and surged through his body, and that softest touch made her writhe against him.

 

Nora was proud of herself for settling back against Loki. 

For not ignoring or pushing back the bit of fear that was still there, but rather looking at it, examining all of its sides.  Maybe it would always be there, because certainly any magic she might or might not have aside, he would always be stronger and more powerful than she was.  She had always been more vulnerable with him than she could be with anyone else, in every possible way, but for the first time she accepted it rather than pretending it wasn’t true.

Now she wanted to be close to him. To rest against the comfortable warmth of his hard, huge body and just unbend.  Her fears could go hang.

He fell silent when she lay back and was very still, as if he didn’t want to startle her away.  The new, strange warmth from him sunk through her clothing.

Then, because he was Loki, his hands were under her shirt.

Steeling herself for what it would feel like when he touched the marks he had made on her did no good.  Either she misremembered how it felt before or something about their new color made it different. Before it had felt good.  More than good. 

Loki’s fingers just grazed them, his right hand over the lines that were shadowed by the swell of her breast, the left touching where her ribs ended just above her navel.

At one of the endless feasts in the Castle, one night Lady Tye was seated next to her and bored, had dipped an elegant finger into her wine and then began to circle the tip around the lip of the glass.  Slowly a sound had built, musical and built from moisture and the crystal, growing louder and more uncanny, causing the red liquid to pulse slightly. 

Because of her musical training she could practically hear each element of it - the shape of the bowl and stem of the glass, the heaviness of the dark wine, the texture of Tye’s perfect, ebony skin, the mineral that the goblet was formed from - as it became more urgent.  

Now that was Nora.  

That faint and reticent touch seemed to have tuned her and the pleasure was  _ harrowing _ .  

She could feel how it formed throughout her body - not only in the swell of her breasts and the cup of her sex, but in the way her blood moved, how her breath not only hitched but sent out hidden elements of her body, things she didn’t understand, that somehow Loki could smell, taking the moisture that was coming from her body into his, and that changed how his breath bloomed, how his his blood flowed, even how his brain thought.  

They no longer merely wanted each other.  With that pushing need to be as close as possible, a few touches and they were already as close as sex has ever made them.  Now they were… she struggled against the rise of her mindless arousal for a moment to recall the word from her brief time as a scholar… they were symphonized.

Loki’s beautiful hands, long and sure, wrapped around her ribs, sliding greedily over her skin - marked and unmarked - and he bit where her neck met her shoulder to stop his mouth.  

There was a sound of one of his fangs piercing her skin.  

An awareness of just that small bit of him being within her for just a fleeting moment…

Then her mind, being part of the conspiracy that their bodies had engaged in, turned into nothing but flashes of thought and a fog of fierce hunger.

She was making noises.  She sounded like that keening crystal glass.

Turning in his arms, Nora knelt between Loki’s thighs and threw herself against him.  She laughed as she kissed him at the startled look on his face. She took his mouth, hers open and demanding, one of her hands winding in his hair, pulling him harder against her when he tried to hold back, no doubt for fear of hurting her.

“ _ Alfadrottning,”  _ he murmured against her lips and she whined a little as she tasted his words slip into her mouth, “I would not… we should be slow… some care might be…”  Even his unstoppable eloquence was faltering.

“No,” she whispered against his throat, “you started this…” Nora nipped at one of the markings on the curve of his jaw.  It was one that she did not share with him and it’s alienness attracted her even as a part of her wanted to erase it from him for daring to not be like what made them one.

When he still held on to his resolve - to go slower, to ease them back together rather than flying into it - Nora stopped kissing him and pushed herself higher, so her breasts were in his face.  She took two handfuls of his beautiful locks, wrapping them around her fists and buried her face against the base of his horns, nuzzling their length, and nipping and soothing the fine skin where they emerged from his head, and worshiping the whole of them with her mouth.  

The old fabric of the shirt she wore gave way under Loki’s grip as he tore her free of it.  In a confusion of motion and sound she was on her back beneath him, his thin lips snarled back from his fangs, his red eyes nearly black.  “As you will it, my queen,” his voice dark and hoarse.

His hand plunged between her legs, his claws stabbing effortlessly through the thick work trousers, and into her, fucking in and out at a slow but relentless place, one of the nails just barely scratching along that place within her that made her back arch and her voice give out with screaming.  But he held her hip and trapped her legs beneath his and she could find no purchase to move him.

“You are so cold...” he drawled out, hypnotized and unwittingly thrusting his cock against her hip, “so cold… and wet for me.”

When his thumb swiped across her clit, where he had traced his last mark upon her, the rock itself felt the resonance of her need and gave way beneath her so her body could fall and then rise against him.

“That is a remarkable trick, Majesty,” Loki said, pulling his fingers from her with a wet sound, catching her sound of disappointment with his mouth as he worked a hand between them and pulled his cock free from his leather trews.  

She tried to reach for it.  It would be hot and harder than it had ever been before.  Nora wanted to touch him so he hissed and clawed. Rather, rolling onto her to pin her against the stone, he snagged her hands and held her wrists in one hand over her head, using his free hand to stroke at her slit with his cock.  

Even as maddened as they both were he still retained himself.

“Shall I fuck you now?  Do you want me in you,  _ fjársjóður _ ?  My pretty little queen?”  He teased at her cunt, starting to breech her and then pulling back.  

“Yes…” she hissed at him.  “As much as you want to be in me…”

He smiled at her cruelly, adoringly, “That is not possible,” he said, as he put the head of his cock in her, and stopped, “I have wanted you for hundreds of years.”  He slid in a bit more, his hips ruthlessly holding her into place as she tried to summon the power to move the rock beneath her again. “Even though I did not know it, I did.  I thought I wanted power.” Another inch. “I thought I wanted fear.” Another. He was like a burning brand inside of her, melting her. “I thought I wanted the universe kneeling before me.”  

His hips slammed forward and now the stone listened to her unconscious need and bowed upwards so Nora lay impaled and curved beneath Loki, like the earth beneath a winter sky.  

“I only wanted you.”

When her release came it rode through her into him, shaking his resolve free and causing him to hammer wildly into her.  

It rode through her into the ground.  And a forest rose on the other side of the world where there had only been a barren waste since the Jotuns first conquered Terra.  

It flowed into Loki and his increasingly erratic thrusts ended in a shuddering arch as he drove into the deepest part of her, every sensation - from marks, to breasts, to the simple feel of his lips against her temple - gathered at that point.  She came again, and pull of it grabbed him and dragged him with her.

It flowed from him, then, and snow fell on overworked soil that had brought no fruit forth in generations, turning to rain in the heat, and the next spring the dirt was black and full of shoots.

Collapsing, Loki rolled over so Nora was atop him, not crushed beneath his now strengthless weight.  She locked her knees about him, so that he had to stay within her.

As she felt herself disappear into utter exhaustion, his hand listlessly stroking her hair, she heard him whisper, “One can only speculate what might have occurred if we had been naked.”

Nora snorted in her sleep.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thank you this chapter to Caffiend, because sometimes I can be a huge pain.


	22. Who Are You, Who Am I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki gets in touch with himself. So does Nora.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In celebration of having over 10,000 hits, an unusual tryst.

Nora had wrapped herself in one of his tunics and was sleeping on the rough pallet Loki had made for them to share out of their bedrolls.  

As she faded into sleep he could see the marks on her grow paler and paler, turning jade, then the shade of a spring laurel leaf, and finally seemingly disappearing into her skin, first the sun-darkened parts of her arms and neck, then the ghostly color of the rest of her tender flesh.

It took a great deal of effort not to join her.   It had been an unusual day even in his varied experience and tomorrow would be be long.  

There was also the small but persistent fear that worried at his thoughts and left them ragged that with the end of their journey she might fear him again.  That the intimacy of being alone upon the road, the strangeness of her new powers, and the undeniable physicality they shared and that their bodies practically insisted they act upon, had overwhelmed her better sense.  

So he would wait.  This time he  _ would  _ wait, would not give in to his lust and dread and use his experience to take advantage of her conflicted heart.  

“Are you so sure of that,  _ Your Majesty _ ?”  

Pulling a blade, Loki pivoted towards the voice from the entrance to the cave, placing himself between Nora and whoever spoke.

“I think that of the two of us, our sweet girl is in far less danger from me.  Would you not agree?”

For once unable to cloak his reaction, Loki dropped stance and stared open mouthed at his Asgardian embodiment, lounging against the cave wall with an arrogant smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“How?”

In the few times that this other self had appeared it had been in chaos and violence, born from the impulses that served his ambitions and his needs.  He could feel that self ripping from his body and the antipathy in which he held that part of him that was not dedicated to his great purpose inevitably would lead to violence.  

Now, this other self came, unbidden as ever but in quiet and peace.

Sneering at him.

Swaggering forward.

“You still do not understand, do you?  Genius that you are, in magic, in politics, in treacherous brilliance, sire?”  He was now so close, and gave an insulting, loose-limbed bow.

“You know my thoughts?”  It was startling. This, too, was new.

“And you could know mine, if you weren’t afraid of the truth.”

Loki pulled himself up.  He was taller by a few inches than his pallid twin, much more if the glory of his horns were counted.  “What could I possibly fear from you, little godling?”

His other self’s hand shot out, faster than a viper striking, driving against Loki’s forehead, invading his mind, while shaking his head ruefully, “As I just said, the truth.”

The memory was old.  

He sat on the floor of his room, a small child.  His mother had, as was her wont, put him there with a ball and left to attend to anything that was not him.  The glossy black basalt floor was hard for him to stand and walk upon, so young he was, so he had quickly learned to not try and follow her.  Instead he would roll the ball hard enough that it would bounce from the azurite veined wall back to him.

Even as a child he bored easily.  

It would have been so much more amusing to have someone to roll the ball to, that might have to scramble after it, to roll it back to him so that he might have to chase it, sliding and laughing.

And then one day there was.  

A small, small boy, with his face. 

They faced each other across the glassy floor.

The other boy raised a shy hand and smiled.

He, too, was a prince.  

Loki did not like that.  He did not like that he was prince very much, it was boring, and everyone thought he was too small and weak to rule.  That he would die. 

He did not want his friend to be a prince.  He did not want his friend to be too small. 

He remembered the little prince with fish belly skin and hair like wheat, who had come with his mother to kneel before the Emperor and show obeisance.  He had only been a little bigger than Loki, and when his mother and Loki’s father had been speaking he had come over to Loki and asked him to play.

Loki had stepped behind a guard and pretended he had not heard.

The other boy changed.  His skin was the color of a statue that had been brought from Midgard to adorn the Hall of Conquests, his eyes were like the plants that grew in the volcanic caves.  

He had no horns.  He was NOT a prince.

His smile became less shy.

For years, when he was lonely or bored and knew he would be alone the other boy would show up.  They would chase each other, creating those games that the young made, with rules that would flux and flow as needed to allow play to go on.  

They told each other stories.  Made up ones. Because the other boy already knew all of Loki’s true stories, and how they were not very fun.  The stories were silly and had no real ending, or proper point, because they were so young, but they would roll on the floor and laugh.

Then they were caught.

They had laughed too loud.

His aunt Geror had come across them on a balcony above the Grand Court, where his father sat in state.  It was empty that day and usually no one would come there. When she had found them she had snatched Loki into her arms and scolded him, telling him that his friend had to go.  That if anyone else saw him that there would be terrible trouble.

That it was ANOTHER way that Loki was wrong.  Another sign that he was not a proper Jotun. 

It was the only time he could remember anyone holding him whilst he cried.  He clutched his aunt’s coat and wept, and she rocked him and told him that one day it would be different, that he would be emperor and then he could do anything he wished and everyone would call it good.  But for now he had to forget his friend.

That his friend was not his friend.  He was a weakness. 

That he should forget all of this.

She sang him a little song, sitting down and holding him on her lap.  His eyes closed, and started to dream before actually sleeping. That his great, warrior aunt shrank until she was small, not as small as he but small enough that he could hold her properly, that when she rocked him it was not like being smothered but simply held.  Her voice turned deep and comforting, her chest flat and perfect for him to stretch out upon, and when he woke he was in his bed and remembered not the change or the strange song or his friend.

“How pitiful,” he said, shaking his head.

“How ungrateful.  Most lonely children would give much for an imaginary friend who can play catch.”

“What did she do to me?”  Loki stumbled back and sat on the ground hard enough to jar his spine and crack the stone.

“You?  She banished me to a shadow in your thoughts that could only appear when you were too broken to fight it.”

“You aren’t even real!”  He roared at his double. “You are something created out of my…. My weakest self!”

“That’s not true,” Nora said quietly.

His other self sighed and rolled his eyes at Loki and then smiled at her, ”Apologies for waking you, my queen,” he said softly, bowing with great respect.  “May I?” 

“You're not the one who got loud,” she smiled back at the imposing interloper.

Taking her hand and not waiting for permission, he kissed her fingers.  

Loki was up and between them in less than a heartbeat, blade back in his hand, “ _ My _ queen.”

Arms crossed, the twin sneered again, “Do you really think she  _ belongs _ to you?”

“Stop it,” Nora pushed under Loki’s arm so she was in front of him, taking the knife from him as she worked her way between the two of them,  “You do realize that you’re fighting with yourself? I’ve seen some strange things since I left the farm but this is about the strangest. And that includes Baba Yaga in her long-johns, so keep it in mind.”

The double laughed, “I would prefer not to, if you don’t mind.”

Loki wrapped his arms about her, glaring at his unwelcome guest and ignoring the unsavory image they were sharing of the hag in  _ deshabille _ , “Everyone fights with themselves.  I simply do it in a more advanced form.”

Nora laughed, “Because you haaaaaave to do everything better than everyone else?  Even bad things?” 

“Naturally,  _ Alfadrottning _ .”

“Of course,  _ fjársjóður _ .”

They spoke at the exact same moment so Nora wasn’t sure which of the males towering over her had called her ‘fairy queen’ and which one had called her ‘treasure.’  But the way they glared at each other after the fact meant that each one thought they had made the wrong choice of it.

They did it again.

In reverse.

She still couldn’t tell who had said what.

She snorted.  

She pushed her way from between them and doubled over laughing.  When they both moved towards her she put up a hand, “Wait, wait, sorry, just…”  Then she started again. Hysterical. Unable to stop. Her mind had reached it’s limit and this was it.  

She laughed hard enough to hurt.  To wrap her arms around her stomach and try to hold herself in.  She laughed to tears. 

“Nora...” 

“Nora...”

They both sounded so worried.

At the same time.

Damn.  Just as she was about to stop.

“Help…” she said weakly.

Her king took one of her wrists and gently pried her hand away from her mouth, “I am not certain...” 

He looked so distressed, her beautiful, restrained king clearly upset because she could not stop laughing.  At him. 

Behind him she could see her now dear friend from Baba Yaga’s farm, the friend - who was maybe a god - who had nursed her when she thought she was dying and had never shied away from any disgusting part of it, anxiously looking over the king’s shoulder, trying to see better.

With one last snort, Nora stopped herself, aching and smiling at them.

No, not them, at _ him _ .

They were Loki.

“I’m ok,” she managed, stopping herself.  She squeezed the hand that the king held, and then reached out the other one to his twin, who took it.  “You’re not. But I’m fine. I can’t believe I’m fine but I am. I should be darned fearful with two of you all here,” Nora said, finding herself getting more country, having two patrician husbands to contend with.  “But you are a mess. Both, before you ask. Both of you, which is one of you.”

“I-,” the king started to speak, and she put a finger to his lips.

“Kiss me.”

His glowing crimson eyes narrowed, “Before this creature?  Surely you-”

She kissed him instead, her fingers on the back of his neck, her toes on his boots so she could use the extra height to reach him.

The god convulsively gripped her hand, almost hurting her, and then pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses along her wrist, her inner arm, and when he could no longer bear it pulled her into his arms.  When the king angrily growled Nora kissed the god quickly, his body almost burning compared to the gentle warmth of his double.

Before he could move to take her back, she could hear Loki moan behind her, stepping in, trapping her between them.  “Extraordinary...” he hissed out, burying his face in her hair as he felt the kiss, the press of her body, as if they were happening to him.

“I thought so,” Nora whispered.

“How would know know such a thing?” he murmured into her ear, making her tremble.

“I guessed.  I’m a good guesser.”

“I have never been one for generosity.  To share you  _ my  _ treasure…”  She leaned her head back to see his radiantly hot eyes lock with the cool green of his twin’s.

“Don’t look at it as sharing.  Look at it as being twice as greedy,” the god smirked at the king.  His long, pale fingers glided over the silken tunic Nora was wearing, wrapping around her ribs, staring down into her eyes like a snake tangling its prey with its gaze and coils.

It was a look that she wouldn’t be surprised to see on the king’s face, but not on his, which was normally so tender with her.  “You aren’t usually like th- ah!” 

The king had her hair in his fist and carefully pulled her head back so he could kiss where her pulse was going wild with just the softest brushes of his lips.

There was an almost painful surge through her body as her marks flooded with blood and power, tracing darkly over her skin.  

“I am going to lick every one of these, my queen,” the god whispered into her ear, as her king used his fangs to tease along the ones that had spiraled and entwined about her throat.  His voice sounded drugged and even lower than normal, his fingertips sliding over the marks on her arms.

Nora turned in his arms and kissed Loki, reaching up softly stroke his horns, bending slightly backwards so while he wrapped himself about her, falling into the kiss, her god unfastened her tunic, pulling it open and lifting her so the raised arabesques on her breasts met those on her king’s chest.  All three of them sighed in conjoined pleasure.

A hand, any hand, she couldn’t tell and didn’t care whose, toyed with one of her breasts, pinching hard at the same time that another slid between her legs.  Her husbands shared an appreciative laugh at how wet she was, at how quickly she closed her thighs about those fingers.

Every part of her ached.  More than anything she wanted one of them in her.  She wanted her mouth everywhere on their bodies, and their mouths on her.  

But there was something she wanted more.  Just thinking about it made her legs go weak.

She kissed the god, his tongue teasing at her, stroking while she matched the motions with her hand on the king’s horns.  She kissed the king, nipping his lower lip, playing as if she had his fangs, reaching behind her now with one hand to pull his raven hair.

To pull him to himself.

“My mischievous queen,” the king purred, lifting so her legs wrapped his slim hips, “are you attempting to maneuver me into caressing myself?”

Behind her, long fingers stroked between her legs, teasing her opening, while she rubbed eagerly against the straps of Loki’s trews.  “How depraved you are...” Then, he reached around and opened the king’s pants, nimbly pulling free his cock, then palming it, his hand languidly sliding up and down as a perfect, clear bead of wet formed on it and rolled down onto to the backs of his fingers.

He offered them to Nora who eagerly licked him clean, the cool saltiness of the moisture and the warm saltiness of his skin making her mouth water.

There were no words for the sound that the three of them made as he then lifted her just enough that Loki could thrust into her, while the two men, each with a small look to her first, kissed.  

Nora leaned back on her god’s shoulder, as her king lazily fucked upwards into her, just barely grazing her clit, and watched them.  Her sweat slickened body easily moving against both of them, her markings mating with her Jotun lover’s, her pale skin flushing against her Asgardian’s.

She wrapped fingers in both of their hair - silken on one side, curling in the humidity from the hot spring on the other - her breath coming in broken, excited pants as she watched.

What started as a tentative touch of thin, mobile lip to thin, mobile lip -  startling even these two debauched sides of the same carnally wicked creature - grew deeper, more fervent. Then softened, growing lighter and sweeter, with a mutual smile, slightly shy on the part of the god, kind on the face of the king. 

His beauty doubled before her, different but exactly the same, was almost more than she could bear.  

One tear, and then another, slowly crept down Nora’s face.  

“No tears, my beloved,” Loki said, “we have not forgotten you.”

“I didn’t think you had, I ju-”

He stopped her, with a kiss, everything still too delicate, “I know,” he whispered in her ear.  “But we have so many thoughts that we have shared now, about you.” Then his mouth was on her markings, on her back, working his way down, then up, about her shoulders, down her arms where he stopped to share another quick kiss with himself, then a longer one with her, and then back to his work.

Each brush of his lips, each stroke of his tongue, echoed in her cunt, in a throb of her clit against her husband’s warmth, as he steadily, effortlessly fucked himself with her.   Still able to be a little jealous of himself, when the god’s mouth moved from her’s he snarled his claws in her hair again, pulling hard enough to hurt, kissing her wildly.

Pressure built everywhere in Nora, her heart pounding crazily, her skin felt so good, so sensitive, so complete that it was more than she could take.  She was going to faint if she didn’t come soon.

She wondered if they would notice if she did, or if they would continue, simply looking at bringing her back around as an erotic challenge to share.

When he lapped against her cunt, allowing the drag of Loki’s cock in and out of her to pull him along so he teased at both of them, Nora squealed, her arms flailing down, not long enough to grab his hair like she wanted, to pull that perfect mouth harder against her.  The king tightened his grip on her hair, on her waist, moving his mouth from hers so he could whisper in her ear what it felt like to to be in her, to be tasting her at the same time, how the mix of the two of them flooded of ambrosial. And then that he could feel her cunt around him even as she dripped that same delight into his mouth, warm and rich and pungent. 

Beneath her, he plunged his somehow slick fingers, into her anus, stretching and fucking, entering after nothing but the slightest, tormenting tickle on the outside.

Her body gave out, her pleasure cresting in shock and a kind of aggrieved and embarrassed bliss, so she buried herself against Loki, whimpering and consumed.  

Kneeling as he still held her, so she was again supported between the two of them, now the god stroked her hair and whispered how adorable she was, how brave, how perfect.  How honored he was to be her lover, if only for this one night.

“I would take you here, as well,” he said, still idly toying with her other opening.  “It would be so sweet to be in you twice at once, but the last time we played with this part of you is not a good memory for any of us.  He’ll need to rewrite that for us, but another time.”

Sighing, Nora lifted her head enough to see him, unsteady, unfocused, “I-”

“Shhhh…” The king put a finger to her lips, “Just feel.  Time for thinking later”

 

By dawn the three of them were in a heap on the bedrolls, Nora cradled asleep against the king’s chest, his head resting on his clone’s arm, while his leg was coiled over Nora’s.  

“I cannot decide if this is the most absurdly narcissistic act imaginable, or the most obvious metaphor for the need for self-love conceivable,” he said quietly, even though he knew that his exhausted little queen was unlikely to wake for less than an explosion big enough to take off the top of the mountain.

“Two things can be true,” he answered himself.  Then he carefully kissed Nora’s temple, fondly brushing a bit of sweaty hair from her brow.  “How I love you, my precious treasure,” he said to the sleeping queen. “And you, as well, I suppose.”

His voice trailed off as he dissipated into silver and absorbed back into the king until he might next be needed.

“And I you.  I suppose,” Loki said to himself, settling down to get a least a few hours of rest before the last leg of their journey home.

After a few minutes, Chernaya entered with a triumphant bleat, somehow dragging the carcass of a small, wild boar.  He bleated a few more times, annoyed that no one was choosing to praise him for his latest murder. Then, recognising a good idea when he saw one, curled his hooves under him for a well-earned nap.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe I have a story with over 10,000 hits, let alone over 500 kudos, and so many kind and beautiful comments. Thank you all for traveling with Loki, Nora, and me.


	23. You Can Never Go Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A journey ends.

The next morning, earlier than he would have preferred, Loki woke Nora so they could finish their journey.

It took both a great deal of effort, and a great deal of restraint on his part, as his actual desire at that moment was to pet and tease her awake, then after pleasuring her, letting her go back to sleep while he turned the cavern into a comfortable residence that they need never leave.  There would be little effort to it, after all the bath was already installed.

He’d just need to summon Ceorl from the Castle and it would be perfectly cosy.

He looked at Chernaya, sleeping on a pile of suspiciously clean bones, his delicate hooves crossed.  The beast would make a fine area rug.

Nora, as if hearing his thoughts, sat up, eyes still closed, and pointed at him, “Don’t kill my goat,” and then fell back onto the pile of blankets, asleep again.

Time would need to be made to examine Nora’s new gifts, and to reason out how she could control them.  Loki feared that she might harm herself accidentally if she did not know what she could do or how strong she was.

To say nothing of what she might do to him, a thought that was alternately disturbing and thrilling.  He was enamored of the idea that his tiny queen could always defend herself against him, should he backslide in his careful adoration of her, but he also was concerned at what he knew would be her terrible guilt if she should, not knowing the extent of her powers, harm him without intent.

It was possible she might even be able to kill him.

Or turn him into a companion for her gruesome familiar.

He and Chernaya eyed each other cautiously as he went about preparing breakfast.

 

Nora wrapped her legs around her husband’s waist and laid her cheek on his thick hair, wondering if she could fall asleep like that, or would she fall off of him?

“Do not even consider dozing,” he said, his voice deep and stern, intentionally jostling her as he easily ran down the deerpath he had found that would lead them more quickly back to the castle.  “I am quite as weary as you,  _ fjársjóður,  _ indeed perhaps twice as weary.”

She snorted against his neck, “Twice as wearying, maybe…”

“What?” he said, quellingly.

That particular tone, joined with the memories of the things - so many things, in so many combinations that she had never considered possible - that the three of them had done the night before, along with the erratic but firm rubbing of her core against Loki’s back, made her eyes flutter closed, her breath deepen.  Then she caught herself and gave one of the small braids above his ears a good, hard tug.

“Ah, ah, no using that tone on me, you.  You were the one who said we don’t have time for anything but travel this morning.”

“We do not.  So cease tugging my hair.”

It sounded like an order, but Nora knew a plea for mercy when she heard one.

Well, she thought she did.  She’d never had anyone at her mercy before and she wasn’t sure that she liked it.  She’d have to try it out a few times to decide.

“Fine,” she muttered, but still kept his hair wrapped around her fingers.

“Trust me when I say that in our present circumstance, while your arousal may be frustrating, mine is agony.”

Snorting, she lay her cheek back against his hair and fell asleep anyway, knowing that he would never let her fall.

 

They stopped a hour or so shy of the castle so Nora could stretch her legs and they could eat before returning.  Chewing on some jerky - Baba Yaga had not told them what animal it came from, but she had solemnly promised it was not Jotunn, which Loki was not certain he trusted but did not tell his wife - and sharing a metal water flask, they sat on fallen oak. 

“So, how do we get back into the castle without being seen?  It’s not as if we can just walk up and knock on the door,” Nora asked.

“I have a way in known only to myself and Ceorl.  And now you.”

She gave him a grateful look and his heart ached.  “Never feel gratitude toward me, nor guilt for anything you might do.  You owe me nothing and I should have long since trusted you with my secrets.”

She rolled her eyes upwards, as if asking the trees for strength.  And perhaps now she could take it from them. Then she leaned forward, putting a small hand on his calf and smiling, “Trusting me was never the problem, if you don’t know.  You didn’t trust yourself trusting me enough to believe that I could be trustworthy.”

He started to object and then parsed through the sentence and instead raised a brow at her, “That is quite astute.”

“Told you before, I read those, what do you call ‘em?  Booooks? I read those there books. They’re full o’ clever stuff,” she said, standing and stretching.  “Mind if I walk the next couple of miles?” And then walked on the path without waiting for his answer.

His queen was, as ever, too clever for his own good.  Alas, he was enchanted by her disrespectful and challenging aspects as he was her more gentle sides.  Sides that was certain had to exist, had he had time enough to search them out.

Loki added that to his ‘to-do’ list for Nora.  Help her learn about her new powers. Share the rest of his secrets with her - the hidden airbases, the dragon sleeping at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, hair care, etc.  Find her gentler attributes.

The day turned unpleasant the closer they were to the castle.  It seemed as if the already brief Siberian summer had begun to wane, as evidence of green leaves starting to freeze and the undergrowth looked blighted and crisp.  There was a deep silence as well, and absence of the sounds of animals and birds, no quiet fall of paws or the stirring of wings in the air. Unconsciously, Nora walked closer to him and put out her hand.

Taking it, a bit unnerved himself, Loki noted that even Chernaya had come on to the path and walked on the other side of his mistress, his strange eyes narrow and glaring at the forest as if it had somehow betrayed him personally.  Nora laid her other hand between the beast’s horns.

The air grew heavy and unpleasant, like it hung with grease and dust, thick enough to feel like a curtain that could be parted.  There was a smell, like burning rubber, turpentine, and rotten flesh.

“Loki?”  Nora sounded frightened.  The marks on her body started to turn green, at the moment the color of new leaves, but growing darker.

“I should go ahead,” he started, but she held his hand.

“No.  We’re in this together or not at all.”

He stopped for a moment, staring down at where her fingers laced with his, turning slightly red with the pressure of holding him in place, nodding slowly.  “Yes.”

They started to hurry, although he was fairly certain that whatever they were going to find had happened some time ago.  

Within the forest there were more rocks - from the size of boulders, to mere gravel - than either had seen on their journeys from the castle.  

More fallen trees.

More crushed plants and dead animals.

Finally, they entered a clearing where a massive stone, the size of a small hill, lay half embedded in freshly disturbed earth.  

Before he could stop her, Nora had dropped his hand, thrown off her pack, and started scrambling up the uneven surface of the rock.  She slipped once, and then the marks on her seemed to light and dim and suddenly the stone seemed to form hand and footholds as she needed them, climbing easily to the top.  Chernaya, making his wild ancestors proud, followed his mistress nimbly enough. Before he could follow suit, Nora cried out.

He was up the rock in a moment.

Over the tops of the trees he could see the mountain that his castle had been carved from.  Even blasted and blown apart it was an imposing sight, black and jagged, mist covered and ruined.

“Oh, there were so many people…” Nora said, leaning against him, putting an arm around his waist.  “Your… all of your work...”

He had spend decades creating it.  By magic, will, and might he had carved out every room, every hall, from the peak to deep in its roots, each space - public, private, covert - his own choice and design.  The ceilings painted with images of the skies of the different planets he had lived on. The furnishings, all collected over his travels, the artworks, all beloved. Where he had ruled from.  Where he had wed Nora and first taken her to his bed. The place he had planned to live out his eons, the seat of his coming empire. 

His first true home.

Who had been there when it happened?

Without a thought, he slipped down the other side of the boulder and began to run through the forest.

It took him so long to get there.  The rubble from the incident blocked the paths and even the proper road when he gave up on trying to hide his presence and took the shortest route.  More and more the size of the pieces of the mountain created a new terrain of hills and valleys, and he found himself jumping over cracks in the tarmac that were deep enough to swallow him whole.  

The closer he grew, the more he started to see evidence of the destruction inside the castle.  Jagged, broken metal supports. Paper, some caught on the breeze, some sodden and stuck to the earth, to the sides of trees like pale moss.  Broken furnishings, perhaps part of his council table, maybe a leg from his bed, clearly cushions from one of the reception rooms, no longer green but black with dirt and smoke.  Clothing that had been torn to filthy rags. 

No bodies.

How could there be no bodies?

And how had it been done?  The magical wards he had placed around the castle should have deflected ANYTHING that Laufey would be able to attack with.  Every one of those rooms and hallways, all of those furnishings and artworks, the very paintings on the ceilings had been part of the spell, enchanted so if an attack should strike the exterior of the mountain where it was painted it would deflect it into the alien sky it depicted, Realms and Realms away from Midgard.

It was one of the largest pieces of sortilege ever created.  

And it had done no good.

Why were there no bodies?

Would his father have given a warning, allowing the castle to be evacuated?  No. Laufey would consider anyone within to be an ally of his traitorous get, or a human, and therefore worth no such consideration.

Eventually he stopped running.  What did he think he would find there?

A mile away, the road completely gone, he simply stopped.  Staring.

Someone had created a massive mound of soil, that he could sense held the corpses of those who had fallen due to his pride.

But it was not a mere mass grave.  It had been created with care, a perfect halfmoon of soil, respectful.  A resting place. 

Atop it were symbols, human ones.  Those that were left, once, before the Jotnar had come, on the graves of the dead.  

Crosses, many of them, some with two crossbars, hastily formed from fallen wood.

Stones.

Flowers, drying, their petals wilted.

Burning incense, and evidence of larger fires where things made of paper had been burned as well.

Food offerings.

Carved dolls, shaped like people, or little cats, or sleeping dogs.

Colored sand.

Birch and pine branches, woven into esoteric patterns.

More.  More than even he could make out or understand.  

And on the far side of it the remains of a pyre where the Jotuns had been burned, but again evidence suggested not a rude disposal of bodies, but a proper cremation as would be done on Jotunheim itself, complete with a stone ax sticking upright from out of the pile of ashes, so that none of the dead would journey to Hel unarmed.

Unthinkingly, Loki took a handful of the still warm ashes and slapped his hands together, head bowed, showering himself in the remains of his personal warband, whispering the prayer of the fallen.  

“Walk boldly into Hel’s great hall, bowing not, but standing before Her throne, weapon in hand, fearless of the torments She rules over.  Face eternity as you have faced our enemies, as you have faced the endless ice, and the emptiness between the stars. Your brothers are at your side, your sisters guard your back, your parents go before you, to create the path.  Follow them.”

“I didn’t know the Jotun worshipped the same gods as the Aesir,” a soft voice, old, it’s accent not unlike Nora’s but faded with time, came from behind him.

“We stole them when we stole everything else,” he answered, “Clulann.”

“Your majesty.”

Loki snorted.  “That sounds odd coming from you.”

“It sounds strange to say.  We thought you were killed in the initial attack.”

It was strange to finally be in the presence of his most loyal and successful human adversary.  Stiofan Clulann had dragged the nearly dead resistance back to life by sheer force of will and originality of thought.  He looked at the tiny, ancient for a human man and marveled that he had managed to live to be so old. Not only because of the danger from his chosen vocation, but from his own, small, damaged body.

By any logic the man should have died in childhood, or as a young man at the most, but his cause seemed to have sustained his frail body.

Loki smiled to himself, despite the wreckage around him.  One should never dismiss a small human. They seemed to be the fiercest of their kind.

“Your work?” he asked, gesturing to the graveyard.

“We did what we could.  We had received intelligence from - from our offworld allies that the Emperor had found a way to counter the security for the castle.   We got the information to our people on the inside but it was -”

“Queen Frigga and Barren.”

“What?”

“Your ‘offworld allies’ are the Asgardians, particularly Queen Frigga.  I am sure that she does not give too much information on her activities to Thor.  He’s too impetuous to be trusted with sensitive information. Or anything delicate, really.  And your ‘people’ on the inside is, pardon, was Theunis. Yes?”

“Yes.  How long have you known?”

“Five seconds.  I only suspected before.  Thank you for that. Did he survive?”

“Theunis?  Of course. He had a safe room built into his chambers, just in case.  Once he got the evacuation underway he gathered a few council members there.  They barely made it in.”

“He is a survivor.  Tye? Samiah? My aunt?”

“All safe, but your aunt, she’s not… she was hit by some of whatever force it was that blew up the mountain and she’s not doing so great.  We didn’t,” he stopped speaking and turned and looked Loki in the eye, his were fiercely blue and young. Like his age and weariness were a mask made of crumpled paper, ready to be torn off, revealing an ever young and vital man, tired of war but ever ready to fight.  “Your majesty, we didn’t find the queen. Or your servant. Theunis searched for as long as he could to take them to his safe room but-”

He stopped himself, tears in his voice even if his eyes were bone dry.  

“Not to fear.  Nora is well. Probably cursing me right now for running off.  I have no doubt she will be riding up on her goat at any moment.  And it would take a great deal more than this,” he said, pointing to the incredible destruction, “to even ruffle Ceorl’s hair.”

“That’s goo- goat?”

“Many things more than this have changed, Clulann.  Nora has a pet now. And powers that allow her to change your planet, but I am not certain yet how extensive they are.  She may be a goddess, it is hard to say about these things.”

Stiofan stayed wisely silent, clearly debating with himself if Loki had gone mad or he had.

When, moments later, Nora arrived, riding on the back of an irritable but grudgingly compliant Chernaya he must have decided it was the world that had lost its leash on reason.

Whatever anger his queen had planned on showering on him had dissipated at the sight of the wreckage and the grave mound.  She hastily climbed off of the angry animal, who promptly went in search of something to chew on or kill, and ran over to him, clutching his arms.  He put a gentle hand to her face.

“Many died, but many were saved, including Samiah and Theunis.”

“Ceorl?”

“He was in no danger.”  He told her about the warning from Asgard and the rest.

“Oh, love, your aunt!”  She tried to wrap as much of herself around him as she could, trying to shield him from more loss with her little body.

Loki stroked and kissed her hair, and murmured comfort to her, while Clulann stood respectfully looking away, his self-appointed guard, Наталия, the king recalled her name, came around the mound and whispered something in his ear.

“If you want to see your aunt before she passes, I would come now, sire.”

“I think it’s time you stopped calling me that,” Loki said, kissing Nora’s hair one more time and then stepping away from her.  “Unless you are being a dick.”

Наталия snorted and Nora laughed a bit, “I’m rubbing off on you.”

“Right now, we’ve still got a war going on.  Your war, _ Loki, _ and you don’t get to back out of it just because someone blew up your house.  How many homes have you destroyed over the centuries and expected the people to still keep working?  Plenty. And right now, after all of your propaganda those people are with you, supporting you, fighting for you because you’ve got them convinced that you’re finally fighting for them.  They need a king. They need a queen.”

He stopped and gave Nora a respectful if not very low bow.

“So you’re king until this is over, win or lose, and then we can talk about power and rights and if having a king is such a good idea at all. These days I’m less sure than I was when I was a young man about those answers.  Now, let’s get you to your aunt. I need coffee and a chair.” The red-haired woman took his arm and helped him walk away, motioning for them to follow.

“Majesty?” Loki said, offering Nora his arm.  

She gave him a gracious head tilt and took it, and they walked from the cemetery.

He had never felt more like a king.

  
  
  
  



	24. What You Know You Don’t Know At All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things even Loki does not know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For whatever reason this chapter has taken me over two months to write, picking away at it and never being happy. Thank you all for being patient, assuming any of you are still out there!

The cave was filled with survivors from the Castle, all in little huddles - some cooking, some sleeping, some staring at nothing.   There were no guards, but Loki had seen several in the forest and amongst the rocks and rubble as they had approached.

They had been well hidden and would certainly go unnoticed by any of his father’s troops that might patrol the area, although he was fairly certain they would have been moved on by now, his father would no doubt want his body.  To leave as an offering to the Jotun’s implacable gods. To prove he was truly dead. 

Loki thought of complementing Stiofan on his soldier’s skills but then realized it could come off as… what was that ridiculous term Nora used?  Snarky. It might come across as snarky.

As Nora and he entered the cave mouth, following Clulann and his black clad guardian, the quiet murmurs within turned into a profound silence and Loki found himself unexpectedly ill at ease.  He moved very slightly to place himself at an angle, which would lessen the part of himself that would need to be defended and would allow him to move in front of Nora with one step. 

“She’s in the back,” Наталия said, motioning for them to go ahead while she helped the clearly exhausted Clulann to a seat by one of the fires.  It was amazing that someone so elderly and delicate, who had known so many defeats and seen so much lost, had even managed these mountains. The man’s heart was held together by an unbreakable will.

“We are safe to go on without you?”  

“Unless you make a move we don’t like I am considering us to be allies for the foreseeable future,” the old man said, stretching his legs towards the heat, his face drawn.  “If we have a future, that is.”

Loki nodded once and they continued.  

As they walked, the silence - broken only by the sounds of children who could not be kept still, the scraping of spoons along the bottoms of pots, and the breathing of a few hundred creatures, grew to a near physical thing as they walked deeper into the caverns.

The earth slanted downwards and the survivors grew fewer and fewer as they went.  

Finally, they reached a spot where another cave branched off and sitting there were the remains of Loki’s personal warband - Hernir, Agritta, and Surd, who was large enough and strong enough to have probably held the falling roof of the Castle aloft whilst the others escaped.  

Along with them he was gratified to see Lady Samiah, a white bandage about her ankle showing in sharp contrast to her raven-wing skin, but otherwise appearing unharmed and surprisingly comfortable sitting on a rock stirring a pot of some grain porridge and laughing at what was without a doubt a very ribald story as Agritta was the one telling it.  

She was dressed in the red and yellow evening gown must have been wearing when the attack began.

He was even more pleased to see Ceorl.

Even though Loki knew that his impeccable, irreplaceable servant would easily survive something as trivial to him as fire raining from the sky to explode the mountain top he was within, Loki still felt a profound relief.  

Only Loki could tell that the demonic retainer came close to blushing and very nearly gulped with emotion when Nora threw her arms around him, giving him a fierce hug before moving on to do the same with the more receptive Tye.   

“Ceorl, I am gratified to see you are still with us,” he said.

“Thank you, Sire.  May I be so bold as to say the same of you and her Majesty?”

“Of course you may.”

“I am gratified to see you both well, Sire.”

“Thank you, Ceorl.”

It was far and away the most emotional Loki had ever almost seen the servant and he politely turned away so Ceorl could do whatever he needed to do to compose himself.  

Samiah gave a perfect bow with gritted teeth, her ankle no doubt paining her.  To his surprise Loki found himself wanting to tell her to take her seat again, that in the current situation such formalities were out of place and a bit silly.  But Samiah, as much of her family before her, was born into his court, returning home to Africa only to marry, celebrate other marriages and births, and be buried. 

Lokii knew from his own life that the formalities, the rituals of life could be a great comfort when one had nothing else.

“Welcome, Majesty.”

“I am pleased that you are with us, Samiah, and that your sister is as well.”

“She will be desolate that she was not here to greet you as well, Majesty.  And her Majesty,” she gave a smaller, less formal bow to Nora, smiling a bit at what was clearly a lie.  Lady Tye still did not understand Nora and probably never would. Then, smile quickly gone, she said, “I am afraid that your aunt is… she is fading, Sire.  The last day she forced us all out of her presence, saying she would see no one but you. You and the Queen. She was always certain that you were both still alive, she said that she would _ know  _ if either of you were dead.  I believed her, but I thought she had no magic.”

Loki frowned, “Yes.”

Samiah spoke softly, “You should hurry.  Despite her orders I looked in earlier whilst she slept, and she looked…”  She seemed unable to find the words.

Nodding, he took Nora’s hand and led her to his aunt.

Geror was on a pallet that seemed to be made of the purple velvet curtains that had once hung in one of the dining chambers.  Several lanterns had been placed about the space she was in, and the smell of encroaching death and burning oil made his eyes sting.

For why else would they water?

“Loki?” she said in Jotun, her voice trembling.  “Come here, come…” 

He knelt at her side.  “Aunt? Where are you hurt?  My healing is indifferent at best, but perhaps-”

She looked old, older than she should, her proud face sunken, her mouth drawn back so her fangs seemed to protrude.  “No, my child, my beautiful, perfect child. My wound is not the problem, my age is. I am so fucking old and so fucking tired.”

The profanity shocked him.  Not that his people were especially delicate speakers, but members of the royal family spoke in a manner closer to that of the Asgardian royals, his father having decided to steal their rather impressive sense of ceremony along with their lands, their Allfather, their gods, and their freedom.  And his aunt was far from old by Jotunn standards. Certainly she was younger than his father who was still in his prime.

Damn him.

“Aunt, I-”

She cut him off with a sharp gesture, “No, my time is so short.  Just once I want to hear you call me what I truly am. Call me grandfather…” she whispered, laughing.

There was a golden flare of light from her body.  A seidr light the same as when his other self appeared, or when he shapeshifted, back when he had still done so.

In her place was something very, very ancient. 

Something that had not been seen or had even existed in thousands and thousands of years.

Something male.  More or less

Something ancient.  Too ancient to be alive.

A legend.

Tiny, delicate almost, for a Jotunn, with proud horns that spiraled rather than curved like those of the royal family.  

_ Vikkuaglød _ .

“Or grandmother,” it laughed at his expression, but weakly, terribly weakly.  “That is just as true. Technically great-great-oh-so-many great grandmotherfather in truth, my delight.  But just say it once, my beautiful cuckoo, my glorious child. Call me grandmother. Call me grandfather. How I have always longed for you, and for you to know me.”

 

Nora, who had been lingering behind respectfully stepped forward, clutching one of Loki’s arms and staring.  “Lady Geror?”

It laughed again, it’s voice deepening and then growing lighter as it seemed to waver between genders, “No, no.  Call me ‘granny’ my child. Oh, look at those lovely markings! You are such a lovely little treat. When I was younger I would have seduced you in a trice and drained all of that seidr to keep myself alive.  You would have kept me going for centuries, I can tell. What a waste that would have been. You will be such a delightfully powerful Queen for my splendid boy. Or is it boys?”

It winked at Nora, who blushed, her markings turning darker and her skin flushing rose.

It laughed again, but this time entirely male, “Mmmmm… I don’t know what I like better about you.  How much your changes to our beautiful king have angered that cloddish hog Laufey or how you smell like apples and a good fuck first thing in the morning.  Gods, apples... The food on this planet has almost made the hot weather worthwhile.”

Loki growled and it waved a hand, “No disrespect intended my beloved child.  When you reach over ten thousand years you can say anything you want.”

“What are you?” Loki bit out, stepping forward.  

“Oh, I’ll tell you that.  About me. I think I remember what my name was, I think.  About how your father’s tribe slaughtered mine, but you know that part.  All but me. You don’t know that part. About where I was when the killing happened,” now the voice and the form were female.  “But more importantly, I will tell you who you are. But come close. I promise not to bite. Not you, my precious prince, my changeling, my darling, darling last  _ Vikkuaglød.” _

She made a soft laugh, “Or your cute little queen.  She can be safe at your side now...” A finger with little more flesh than a gnawed chicken bone wagged at Nora, “I always liked you, but I was sure you’d be dead by now.  Who knew?”

Nora looked at Loki, “What’s a  _ Vikkuaglød?” _

He glared at… whoever that creature was, “They were a clan, a clan of sorcerers and assassins, in the far past on Jotunheim, living in the most remote places.  They were powerful and dangerous and strange, and were different than the other tribes. My ancestors killed them. My ancestors…”

Loki’s voice went from furious to soft to silence.

“We were your ancestors, child.  I bred with your father’s brutal and simplistic line thousands and thousands of years ago, taking the place of the first _ Julma _ king’s silly bride, knowing that through the distillation of years one day you would be born with the power of our fallen family.  Well, bred without them knowing, of course. I made a very pretty giantess back then,” the old creature, now male again, said. “It was far from easy to change my size that much, but the rest of our kind let themselves be killed so I could take their power and make you.  So I could take their power and learn to steal the lives of member after member of your father’s moronic and crude family so that I could live to see you. As much as I loved taking their lives it was nothing compared to the joy of you, beautiful Loki. 

“And nothing compared to the pain of seeing you so mistreated by them!  Trying to offer you comfort and hide my secret at once. When your father sent you here I thought it would be the end of all of my hopes, but you have done so much, so well.  So much and so well.”

His voice turned rough and a series of wracking coughs took him.

Nora knelt at the old creature’s side and offered him water.  Loki seemed frozen in place.

“No, no,” he patted her hand, and then crooked a finger so she leaned closer, so she had to lean into his whisper.  For a moment she almost backed away, nervous at what he might do to her, but then she saw his eyes. The brilliant Jotunn red was fading and the weariness of being alone with a secret for eons was there.  

The voice was female again, “He will be fine.  Eventually. The baby will help.”

A paper-light hand rested briefly on her abdomen, and then fell away.

Nora jerked back, “What?”

But she was dead.  

“The  _ Vikkuaglød _  were monsters…”  Loki choked out. “Oh, I am…”

Nora stood on her booted toes and took his chin, forcing him to look down at her, “No.  You are not. Don’t say it. Don’t think it.”

“I-,” he closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to turn away.

“Am my husband,” she kissed him, her lips pressing softly to his.  Almost innocently. “And a king whose people need him. And no different than you were before we entered this cave, just more knowledgeable.”  She kissed him again, this time on the cheek, “Can you truly tell me that there is not a part of you that is not pleased to know… whatever it was she was saying?  Because I actually don’t think I understood any of it other than she, he, they were some kind of  _ Leanhaum-shee _ or other and… no I don’t think I understood any of the rest of it.”

She found herself carefully touching her fingertips where the hand had rested, pressing ever so gently. 

A throb of soft, thrilling energy briefly fired the markings on her skin and then faded to something like sleep.

Loki looked down at her, frowning, “Are you well?  What was that?”

No, this wasn’t the right moment.  Especially since she wasn’t exactly sure she knew what she thought she knew.  She wondered if there was a way to send for Baba Yaga. And if the tetchy old woman would come if called.  

“I’m fine.  Just getting used to everything.  We should tell someone so they can take the body to be burned with the others.”

Loki stared at the tiny corpse, “No.  A  _ Vikkuaglød _  would not want their ashes mingled with those of other Jotunn.  I’ll deal with her myself. Later. And in the meanwhile Ceorl can prepare the body.  He knows the rituals.” His voice became stronger, as he turned to business, “But now we should go confer with Clulann.”

Nora would have wanted to sit with him, to get him to tell her the story behind this frankly almost too strange for even their lives even, but she knew that he needed a distraction.  She trusted that he would explain it to her in time.

 

Loki’s head whirled and ached and if suddenly certain things made perfect sense he found no comfort in it.  He knew he should be speaking to Nora, but he found himself walking back towards the head of the cavern in a daze.

Then he noticed the silence.

He kept his head up and refused even glance anything but the echoing space before them until he felt Nora touch his arm softly.  “Look,” she whispered.

He stopped and they turned to look behind them.

Collectively those they had passed had stood.

Loki wanted to take a dagger in hand, he wanted to push Nora back so she would be against a wall and he would be between her and the others.

Nora’s gentle touch moved him and they turned back.  Those they had not yet passed had also risen.

There was a thin line of tension that ran through the room like a wire, one that might suddenly electrify everyone, or electrocute the two of them if it went wrong.  

A lovely girl with perfect blue-black skin, who he remembered filling his wine-cup a time or two at a feast came forward carrying a bundle of fabric, which she lay on the ground at their feet.  “I was in your chambers when the warning came, Majesty, and I thought… I took them because I was certain that you were still alive, no matter what the rumors said.”

Without waiting and with no thought of dishonesty on the part of the girl, Nora picked it up, pushing what he recognised as one of the velvet blankets he kept for her comfort in his bedchamber.

Carefully wrapped within it were his and Nora’s crowns, their wedding rings, and Nora’s bridal collar.

Nora placed the bundle in his hands, and Loki found himself too stunned to stop her as she grabbed the girl in a hug, “Thank you, Difoni, thank you…” she whispered, rocking the surprised servant back and forth.  

Of course, she knew the girl’s name.  

Then she turned to everyone else, “Thank you all, for… um… surviving, and helping to bury the dead.  We’re sorry, so very sorry that we weren’t here to help. Well, I’m sorry, I could have been some real help,” she gestured to Loki with her thumb, “he’s never dug a pit in his life.  Although he has split rails recently, when he came to find me. He did farm work and everything when he came to get me back from where I ran off. I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed because we were at war and I’m your Queen, even if I probably don’t have any business being one.  But we had… Things happened with the two of us and I didn’t know what to do. So I did something selfish and stupid. Not leaving him, that was fine, I had to. But I shouldn’t have left all of you.”

She took a deep breath.

“Anyway, we’re here now, and he’s probably going to be very regal and act as if nothing has changed.  But it has. He mucked a goat pen because he wanted me back that bad, so imagine what he might be willing to do to get  _ our  _ whole world back.”

Chernaya, sensing his mistress needed support, gave a terrifying bleat.

The crowd was stunned and then burst out laughing.  There was also a little cheering. The humans did, at any rate.  The few Jotunn with them stomped their feet but remained expressionless.  Save for massive Surd from Loki’s personal warband, who had to wipe a single speck of ice from his eye, having been raised on Midgar-, that was on Terra, and having an almost human level sentimentally as a result.

It was not the dignified return that Loki might have wanted but then, they were in cave, his castle was destroyed, and who knew what was happening on the rest of the planet?  Good will, even love, would take them much farther from this point than dignity could.

Nora removed his ring from the bundle and quickly slid it on to his finger, then turned back to the crowd, holding his hand aloft.  “See? Rough as any of yours.”

This time the cheer was louder.

Not certain what else to do, Loki started to incline his head toward the crowd, and instead bowed.

Again it was quiet, this time as if everyone were stunned, as if all of the air had fled the space.

Then, first in ones, then in twos, then en mass and still silent, the crowd knelt.  

 

Loki did not know which rumor the servant girl - Difoni - was speaking of when she mentioned that he and Nora had been said to be dead.  Indeed he doubted she knew, since if there were rumors in the castle they would have been started by his father’s agents and they could have been any wild, unlikely thing.  The Queen was pregnant but the father was human or something else, but not the King’s and she was going to have a litter of puppies. The royal couple were actually animatronic, the real Loki and Nora having been kidnapped by Fire Giant forces before the war had begun.  The King was not actually Jotunn at all, but an Asgardian shapeshifter who had been sent in his place hundreds of years before when Prince Loki had been killed in that Realm. 

The Jotunn were brilliant at conquering, good at holding worlds, and pitiful at disinformation.  It had made his own rise to power so much easier, being that inveracity, deceit, and pure libel were amongst Loki’s favorite hobbies. 

And, as he had just learned, it wasn’t just for the fun of it.

It was in his blood.

  
  
  



	25. A Last Moment of Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora and Loki share their thoughts on the future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have reached over 13,000 hits and 1,000 comments on this story! I kind of can't believe it. So this chapter, the twenty-fifth (which I also can't believe) is dedicated to all of my beloved readers, especially my incredibly loyal regular commentators, many of whom follow me from story to story, keeping everything straight, laughing, crying, and being unfailingly kind to my efforts. From Australia to Minnesota, from England to South America, from Canada to Utah to apparently somewhere else in Chicago, I thank and love you all.

They had considered where in the caves they might take their rest before facing everything that must be faced in the morning and could not choose a private enough place.

_ They  _ had considered.  The King and the Queen.  Loki and Nora.

Loki had never before, never truly, never completely, taken another person’s thoughts into equal consideration with his own.  Indeed, until this moment and this simple decision he had at times, recently, had placed Nora before himself. But he had never before placed anyone along side of himself.  As an equal. 

In the past most were below and often very far below him, and a few above him, but never before was someone just _ with _ him.

It took a few tries before he was able to accept it verbally and mentally as he had emotionally for the last few weeks.  “Where shall we rest tonight? I think that, if you agree, we might put off further talks with Clulann and his people until after getting some sleep.  Please inform him, if you would Lady Samiah? And thank you again for your care for my aunt in her last days. You have my eternal gratitude. Then take some rest yourself.  We have much to do in the next few days.”

They were being trailed by not only Samiah but Ceorl, of course, the survivors of his warband, and the last few guards.  

With a brief nod of her head and a confused but pleased smile, Samiah left them.

Loki did not think about Geror.  Or whatever their name had truly been.  There would be time for that later.

Nora stared at him for a few moments, her head cocked slightly to the side, her brows drawn to a peak.  “Something about all of that sounded pretty weird. Like a cat trying to spit out a wad of fur.”

“What?”

“Cats?  When they are sick they… Have you never had a cat?”

“In Jotunheim we do not have animals for companionship, only for food or work.  We have always lacked the resources to just give away sustenance in return for … cuddling,” he said.  “And most Midgardian animals would freeze to death under my touch.”

They walked as they spoke, moving towards the mouth of the cavern, finding most of the rocky alcoves and offshoot caves already occupied.  There were more survivors than they could have dared hope. Loki knew that they could easily take any space he wished. But, safe or not, he felt a need for the open air, and found the idea of making any of these weary people move repellant.  Even the Jotuns who would be eager to later tell the story that their king chose to take their particular bit of rocky ground.

“I did have a polar bear for a few decades.  It must have been, oh, hundreds of years ago now.  Soren…” he found himself smiling at the memory of the massive beast who loved to sleep at the foot of Loki’s throne, knowing that he would periodically be given an advisor or prisoner to snack on.  

It had been a different time.  

“He was such a good boy…”  

“Not cuddly though, I’m thinking.  Now at least I understand why you fell for me so quick,” she said, giving him a sly smile.  

“I never considered you a pet, my Queen.”

“Sure, but everyone wants something little and warm to cuddle with now and then.  Even a scary king,” she laughed at him. And then, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m laughing and your aunt just died.  Your aunt, or your great-grandmother or great-great-grandfather, or whatever they were...” She snorted and he could tell that she was about to burst into laughter, then composed herself, though there were mirthful tears sparkling on her lashes.  “I’ll stop, I promise.”

He was not offended, merely confused.  Nora was the kindliest of creatures and yet something had her peculiarly giddy in spite of the death of Geror and the direness of all of their circumstances.

They stood at the edge of the cavern, looking at the all but invisible route down the rocks that led back into the forest.  His warband were a respectful distance behind them. “I need one last night alone with you.”

One last night before the weight of the heavens fell upon both of them.

He looked down at Nora who was staring out at the vista that had once been blocked by a mountain that was now rubble, his mountain.  She came not even to his shoulder. Her brown hair had grown out a bit and was blowing in the fierce wind that was common this high in the mountains, making her look like a wild thing.  

“I want that, too,” she smiled, a strange, knowing look in her eyes.

 

After making certain that their guards would keep a respectful and distant perimeter, they finally found a place to spend the night.  A small, wooded glen had managed to flourish in a thin valley between the mountains where his castle had been carved. One tree in particular, a great, gently bowed and graceful willow, sat in the center.  For some reason, Loki suspected it was exposure to the magics that had leached into the ground from his construction of his home, it had grown vastly larger than any tree of its type should, reaching well over one hundred feet into the air.

Perhaps even two hundred.

Amazingly, a massive piece of the ceiling from the great hall had fallen and then seemingly tumbled across the ground to come and rest against its mighty trunk, creating a kind of lean-to that was softly brushed by its ever dancing branches.  All of the trees around it showed damage from the masonry’s path, but apart from a layer of leaves that had fallen from the impact the monarch of the valley was undamaged.

Loki unrolled the blankets that had served them since they had left Baba Yaga beneath that surviving bit of his castle.  In the fading light he had could see that the enchantment he had placed on it that it would always show the sky that it normally blocked was still functioning.  It now showed a green mass of leaves. 

Whilst he created their bed Nora laid out the pack of food that a distressed Ceorl had given her, unhappy that he was not to go with them.   The displeased but ever loyal manservant had insisted that if was not permitted to serve them in their camp he  _ would _ take the guard point closest to where they slept.

It spoke to the centuries of wise fear of Ceorl that had been instilled in those Jotnar closest to the King that none argued with him. 

Soren had not been the only creature that had been fed a prisoner in the castle from time to time and Ceorl, unlike Baba Yaga, did not mind the flavor of Jotun.

Before they ate, Loki formed a few small spheres of light in his hand and lofted them to hang amongst the leaves, knowing that the height of the tree would block them from sight even if a Jotunheim patrol should fly overhead.

Leaning against the gigantic trunk side by side, they each ate a hunk of rough, nutty brown bread smeared with cream cheese and stuffed with apples, and passed back and forth an excellent chianti from Castello di Brolio.  

Ceorl had found that many of the wine cellars and the Oubliette of the castle had remained intact, and had brought up a few casks to share with the other survivors whilst hiding a few rare bottles for what he had been certain would be Loki and Nora’s return.  “I’m sorry, again, about your aunt. And about laughing. I always liked Geror. She was the first Jotun to treat me like I might belong in your palace. Actually other than you - and Surd, he’s a sweetie - she, because she was a she then, she was the only Jotun to ever treat me that way.  Everyone else was either rude or confused.”

Loki nodded.  “Geror was always approving of you.  Knowing that they were a  _ Vikkuaglød _ means that makes so much more sense.  They were ever fond of trouble, of anything that is an agent of change and chaos.  You,” he leaned over and kissed her temple, sighing against the warm smell of her skin, “my pretty little queen, have certainly been that.”

“You said that word before, _ Vikkuaglød, _ what does it mean?”  

With a soft grunt Loki told her the long and rather ugly story of the ancient Jotun tribes, and the rivalry between the clever, cruel, magically powerful, and always brilliant  _ Vikkuaglød  _ who wanted the Jotnar to embrace the new and strange and his father’s tribe, the _ Julma _ \- brutal traditionalists who were deeply ambitious, greedy, and effective.  

By the time the story was done it was full dark and Nora was laying with her head on his lap as he stroked her hair for comfort and to keep his hand from shaking.

He was a  _ Vikkuaglød,  _ as surely as if he had been born to them those thousands of years ago.  

No wonder his family loathed him.  Even if they had not consciously known the truth, their very blood at rebelled at the sight of him - the thing they thought they had destroyed, the echo of that ancient crime that they had tried to pretend was glorious.  

“So you’re being little.  Jotun little, not actual little, you’re big as a damned tree.  Not this tree, but a tree. But you’re being little is normal?  You’re supposed to be this size?”

“It would seem so.  Indeed, if the stories are true, and they usually are not as my father’s people were the tellers of them, I might even be the tallest  _ Vikkuaglød  _ ever.”

The more he said the name -  _ Vikkuaglød, Vikkuaglød, Vikkuaglød, - _ the more naturally it fell from his lips.  The more the angle of the tricky word was comfortable in his mouth.

“That’s a kind of relief,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Why?”

“‘Cause I was scared that this baby was going to rip me up even before I had her.  Hey,” she sat up, a look of alarm on her face, “you aren’t all born with those horns, are you?”

“No.  It would usually be a few months before they start to grow.  Even then they are just little nubs for a few years and then-”

Something found its way into his need to lecture about Jotun physiognomy.

“What?”

Nora smiled at him, nearly laughing, and then took his hand and held it to her ever so slightly bowed abdomen.  He had adored that after a few months of properly eating for the first time she had a lovely curve to her belly and had often nuzzled there, pleased she was never hungry.  “Your aunt told me before she died. I’m guessing she had some magic way of knowing, but she didn’t tell me anything else. It’s kind of got to be from since I left the castle, doesn’t it?  Or I’d be bigger?”

Her voice was nervous, “You don’t think I was running around on those damned mushrooms like this, do you?”

Loki could not answer, could not breathe, could not think.

Then she shook her head, not noticing his silence, “No.  Baba Yaga’s bad but she’s not that bad. Though she might think it’s funny.  Fuck! Do you think?” Seeming to notice he had said nothing for the first time, she shoved his shoulder, “What’s the matter.  Are you… are you unhappy?”

Loki stood a took a few steps, not having anywhere to go but needing to move. He heard himself speaking from somewhere, “Even though I have never been certain if I could have a child with a human I have always used my seidr to ensure that I could not impregnate you, knowing a baby of mine would likely kill you.”

“Then what-”

“Whatever caused you to access the power of your earth seems to have been powerful enough to override my efforts.”  He turned and felt himself smile at her, “And we have been more than a little … unorthodox in our matings lately. Perhaps it is my other self that is the father.”

Inside he screamed.  He howled. He climbed to the top of the massive tree and shouted to the sky loud enough to make the moon crack open and shower silver down upon them.

His treasure, his queen, his wife, his beloved Nora carried his child.  

Some part of him was now wedded to her in the absolute way and he would never have believed he could feel such joy.

His darling, his dearest friend, his love carried his child.

In the midst of a war.  And he would never believe he could feel such terror.

“I have to contact Queen Frigga.  I need to find a way to send you to Asgard.”

“What?”

 

Nora had expected Loki to be happy.

Or maybe a bit apprehensive, since it was a big thing to be a dad.  

She hadn’t expected him to give her a little information and then plan to send her away.

“Asgard is the best choice.  I can only assume that the Emperor does not know that they have offered aid to Terra and his gaze is so fixed here that he will have no reason to notice anything occurring on a long since subdued vassel planet.  You’ll like Asgard. And you will love Frigga. She is their Goddess of Motherhood and no being knows more about pregnancy and birth than she.”

His voice was cool and he did not look at her.

“So you aren’t happy about it.  Ok.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you haven’t said anything like, ‘I’m so happy’ and are already trying to sell me on a trip that I am NOT taking, by the way.”

Her voice was far from cool and her body was tense and painful.

His eyes slowly closed, “Nora…” he swayed slightly and his knees gave and he folded to the ground.  

In a second she was next to him, kneeling, holding him, “What’s wrong?  Was it the wine?”

When he looked at her his eyes were blurred with tears and his mouth hung slightly open, as if he could not force out words.  Instead he clutched her to him, sobbing against her shoulder, finally whispering, “If I were happier my heart would freeze into a rock and never beat weakly again.”

“Freeze?”  Nora held him as tightly as she could, the warmth that wasn’t warmth that she felt from his body now seeping into her flesh, softening her muscles.

“It’s a Jotun expression,” he sniffed, pulling away, giving her a familiarly haughty look.  “One I have never used before since it is from a sickeningly sentimental children’s song. It makes no sense in the AllTongue.”

Then, his face tender, his voice gentle and even deeper than normal, he put his hands on either side of her head and leaned his forehead to hers, “It means I could die of happiness, I am so overwhelmed by it.”

“Then why are you sending me away?”

“Because I cannot have you in the midst of this war.  It was only barely imaginable for me before this, but now it’s impossible.  Especially a pregnancy that could be problematic-”

Nora understood.  She did. She even appreciated it.  But if he thought they were going to back to the old them, where he was the king and she did what he said, well, he was wrong.

She cut him off, “You’re what’s problematic.”  

Then, with a slight movement of her fingers where they rested on either side of his waist, the great branches of the tree that sheltered them bowed and writhed and grasped Loki by the arms, pulling him firmly against their trunk.

Now he glared, his eyes ruby and hot, “My little que-”

“Shhh…” she raised a hand as she walked forward, “my turn to talk.”  Roots, thin and fine and strong as steel climbed through the soil and took his ankles, so he half sat, half leaned against the tree, his fisted hands fighting.  

But maybe not too hard.

Nora walked slowly towards her bound husband, placing one foot exactly before the other.  “I am not leaving. I’m not leaving you, or our people, or my home, in time of war. Or any other time.  Ever. I’m going to have our baby here, with you there, fretting and roaring and waiting to hold her. I am going to fight for as long as I can.  I will not be safer on Asgard, where I certainly won’t be able to do anything like this.”

Tendrils from the branches lashed about his arms grew and stretched so they toyed with the closures of his tunic, undoing them and pulling it open.

Others played with the leather thong holding his trews closed until they had worked them loose as well.  

His cock, engorged and nearly indigo with need at his wife’s easy use of power, pushed free of the trews and wept a pearl of fluid that she wet her hand with after working him the rest of the way free and starting to stroke. 

The power to move the earth and the trees and the stone seemed nothing to her at that moment compared to the power she had over Loki.  His beautiful eyes fluttered shut at her touch, “But…”

Another branch carefully wrapped around his neck and pulled his head up and proud so she could lick his neck.  He tasted like heaven and she sucked along the marks there and straddled one of his long thighs to ride against it while he writhed under her.

She stroked him and spoke and kissed his chest and spoke and loosened her own pants and clumsily stepped out of them and spoke.

“I won’t be able to protect myself on Asgard.  I’ll be that little mortal that they have to look after and if your father comes for me there I will be helpless.”  He groaned as her hand tightened a bit on that word, enough to hurt just a little, enough so they both loved it. “Here I can do so many, many things.  I frankly fear for any of your dad’s soldiers that come looking for me.”

She climbed up, other branches now supporting her, her toes able to find hold on the bark of the trunks, as she lowered herself onto his thick, long, lovely cock and sighed as she let herself down and down until he bottomed out within her and the bite of it make her legs tremble with a little pain and so much more melting pleasure.

He stopped fighting the bonds, and it seemed all of his strength and will now were focused on where they were joined, on using the freedom of his hips to undulate and push within her where she needed him while she set the pace.

“You said I would have to learn how to use these powers.  I don’t think I do,” her voice was ragged, but she held on.  His rough panting was loud so she leaned close to speak into his mouth, never quite kissing.  “Everything I have tried to do I have done. A thought, a motion, and it happens. It’s like everything around me is waiting for me to tell it what to do.  Has been waiting for me, for someone, to tell it for a long, long time. I’m the voice, I have the ideas, I can’t explain it.”

Now her thoughts were scattering as her pleasure became too overwhelming and her mind started to go blank.

But she still tried to force the thoughts.  “I need to be here. I know that. I know it.”

“Kiss me,  _ Alfadrottning _ ,” Loki begged.  “Kiss me and stay with me.”

Nora wrapped her hands about the base of his horns, and kissed him, now practically bouncing up and down on his cock, desperately trying to push them both to the end.  The wildness of the kiss and the intimacy of her grip about his horns was too much for Loki and a surge of seidr down his skin made the branches retreat from one of his hands so he could pull her hair back, wrenching and giving him her neck and he marked her again, cutting into one of the hot green marks where her throat met her shoulder with both of his fangs.

She spasmed around him, her arms and legs and cunt going tight as the orgasm wailed out of her.  When he kissed her again, her blood on his lips, on her lips, he sighed and she clutched him again, inside and out, bonelessly riding him to a finish that left them both hanging from the silent tree, it’s branches still gently holding them up.


	26. There is Only the War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War comes to Terra.

Jotunheimr  -

The screen that floated before the throne flared to life with no warning, and the wizened, battle-scarred creature who spoke for Thanos offered no greeting nor honorifics to the weary king.

“I don’t know what you think you have to offer, Jotann.  If your frozen world had anything worthwhile it would have taken before now, and those other planets in your little empire that deserve attention will receive it in good time.”

Laufey knew that Thanos was arrogant, the most arrogant of a species who were able to make the Asgardians at the height of their power seem to be creatures of reason.  And that those who he called his children were perhaps worse. For them the Mad Titan was more than a despot, father, or master. They worshipped him and no act committed by him or in his name, no matter how repugnant or cruel, could be considered any less than a religious duty.

It was hard to know how to deal with such creatures.  Being too humble, which his own character balked at, would give a sense not just of weakness, but cowardice, and matching that arrogance would end with Laufey simply adding another front to his already wildly out of control war.   

Not only was he battling his son and the Midgardians, but they were allied with an allegedly rogue group of Asgardians led by Odin’s younger get.  Queen Frigga publicly condemned and even disowned the prince, calling for the people of Asgard to offer no aid or comfort to the rebels, but Laufey was certain that was only for show, for his sake.  But her Majesty was a talented liar with a gift for illusions, making the truth impossible to prove with his resources stretched as it was.

Another seven minor planetary holdings of the Empire, far flung and lightly garrisoned, had seen the chaos as an opportunity to rise up themselves.  The first had caught the lazy troops completely off guard and there was a part of Laufey that was pleased at the utter slaughter of such worthless Jotunns, but that success lit a fire under the other six worlds, creating a distraction that he could little afford.

And there were many, larger, more important segments of the Empire, and its many enemies, that were watching, waiting, for that tipping point that would decide if they would stay quiet and still, or if they would see the chance to take down a faltering giant.

Still, he had been confident.  If he could break the back of Midgard’s resistance it would end all of it.  He would publicly deal with his treasonous, treacherous first born, publicly and in a manner that would put paid to anyone who might choose to emulate him.  

Along with that Midgardian witch he was bedding.  It was said that she had the voice of a siren. If so, her screams and pleading would be the last serenade that would-be King Loki would hear.  

Laufey thought of his son.  Hated, despised, deformed, brilliant, ruthless, and powerful.  Sometimes he wished that things had been different between them, but then he looked about him, at his people who admired strength alone, at his enemies who looked for anything that might be exploited against him, and knew it could not be.  

He should have left the Crown Prince for dead as an offering to their ancestors when he was born so stunted, as the queen and the elders had recommended.  But when he’d held the tiny creature, ready to hand it to the temple maids to take to its death, the prince though so young had seemed to focus on him, to lock eyes.  His fiery eyes had stared into his own, showing a will and a fearlessness that few creatures had ever shown to him, and he’d shown mercy. 

Mercy that he now paid for.

“I will speak to your master.  Not his currently favored lackey,” Laufey said.  “Tell Thanos,” he said curtly, nodding to one of his technicians who ended the transmission.  

Without fanfare, one of the Emperor’s closest guards entered the throne room, his bare, heavily calloused feet making no noise as he padded across the black ice of the floor.  He made his obeisance and waited to be spoken to. He would wait there for days if needed, not moving, not speaking, he would die standing there if the Emperor should not acknowledge him. 

Laufey’s father Nal, had used that discipline, that bred for stoicism, as a punishment.  When one of his warriors or advisors displeased him he would call them to meet him on the great causeway outside of the royal redoubt.  Once there, he would refuse to speak to them or even recognise their presence, or dismiss them. They would stand there until they died, still standing, and he would use the Casket of Ancient Winters to preserve them eternally, so their perfectly preserved bodies would both adorn the walls and serve as warning to their own people of the price of the king’s displeasure.

The first order Laufey had given upon his father’s death was to smash them to pieces.  

“Speak,” he ordered.

“Imperial Majesty, a dispatch from Midgard,” with a deep bow, he offered a sheaf of papers to Laufey.

Expecting more terrible news, the Emperor found himself reluctant to touch them, like a child who might pretend that not looking at something frightening might cause it to not be there.  Finally, trying not to audibly sigh, he took the dispatch. He shuffled through the loose pages, most of them simple reports, but stopped halfway through. 

“Do we have confirmation that this report from Kyrhyn is accurate?  That it is in fact from him and not more of the disinformation that my treasonous child takes such pleasure in?”

“Yes, Imperial Majesty.”

Slapping the papers into his other hand with a sound like shot that echoed through his empty throne room and throughout the quiet of the castle, Laufey allowed himself a slow, wide, smile.  “Call the Empress to me, and tell Prince Leofric to ready his warband to depart at my word. He may finally have the chance to prove to me that he can capture his brother.”

 

Terra, the former city of Wînipêkohk, at the Forks - 

The capital of the far north of the Olamaca region had been one of the first cities taken by the Jotunns still loyal to the Emperor, led by the disgraced Lord Kyrhyn.  Renamed Vatnefja, it had held out against the Terran forces for months, giving the Imperial Navy a safe port in which to land troop ships and supply vessels. 

Kyrhyn’s headquarters at the place where the two great, icy rivers that bisected the city met, was abuzz with activity.  A great storm was approaching that would serve them perfectly, provided warbands that had been sent out raiding would all return in time with the supplies they needed.  Already seven had returned, each with a coffle of one hundred. If the last five made it before the storm, before the Frost Giants still in the city combined their powers to raise the rivers into a frozen wall that would guard them they would have enough slaves and supplies to turn the tide come spring.

The plan - a thing at which most Jotunns did not excel but that Kyrhyn had learned to appreciate after centuries of serving on Midgard -  was to wait until the full freeze meant Loki would pull his delicate, weak human forces away from most of the northern part of the world. During that time they would fortify.  They would build. They would stockpile both what the Empire still managed to sneak through the net of human manned ships and those of their allies that encircled the planet, and what they would create themselves.  

The spaceport outside of the city had been destroyed by the human resistance early in the war.  A terrorist attack of the worse kind, lead by Clulann’s own personal bodyguard. 

That tiny, pale witch had proved nearly as dangerous as Loki’s own whore of a queen had.  So had the beautiful, if also stunted, Nakia, who had previously seemed to be nothing but a society darling amongst the humans and the more decadent pf the Jotnar who took human lovers.  But who had found her way into the bed of Erkr, the Jotunn general who had been in charge of overseeing the mining of vibranium in Alkebulan, slit his throat and then used his security passes to open the palace to a waiting army of locals, who had been inspired by some long outlawed but still remembered piece of mythology to take over the region and install one of their own as king.

This rebellion inside of a rebellion should have been a boon to the emperor, forcing Loki to split his attention, but rather than doing so he had made peace with this so-called king, allying their forces for at least until the Empire was gone from Midgard.  

Of the ancient hag who lived in the Taiga, who made those Jotnar who dared to enter what she considered her desmanse disappear as if they had never been, the less that was said the better.  Even the other humans dreaded that one.

They should have killed all of the tiny, human females when they first took over the planet, Kyrhyn thought ruefully.  They were all clearly a secret, dangerous coven, and if he could he would personally have them all rounded up and executed.

But that was a thought for another day.  A future worth fighting for.

Even now that it was evident that the Gods of war had turned their back on Laufey, they still held on, confident that the rapidly approaching winter would give them a chance to regroup and fortify.  The uspurer could not afford to send his own, few Jotnar forces against them - most were needed to defend the even colder land in which his palace was being rebuilt. Those who were not there, were in Harbin, rooting out the last of the imperial loyalists who were using it as a base from which to sabotage the industrial power of the Terrans that was centered in Zhōngguó.

Kyrhyn looked at the latest reports from both groups.  While they would prosper in the winter, growing to enormous heights and even greater strength, when it warmed they would not only be weakened, but what weapons and stocks they had would be either insufficient or dangerously depleted.  They would need new arms

And they would need food.

The Midgardians were no match in close fighting for the Jotunns, so they never closed.  They sniped, they attacked at range and ran, they sabotaged, and never stood for a fight when evasion worked. They were cowards.  But not fools. Long range weapons were rarely used by Jotunn forces on already suppressed worlds, so they were only lightly armed for such combat.  Wînipêkohk’s industrial center was small, and had been mostly used for the creation of military vehicles that could withstand extremes of temperature - heat in this case - while protecting the Jotnar soldiers within.  

Over the last months, as they held off the Midgardians, Kyrhyn had been having them refitted to create the ranged weapons they would need to send their self-generated cold attacks far enough to strike the cunning Midgardians where they hid.  

Perhaps even more importantly, another facility, one that had previously been used to process foodstuffs for shipment to Jotunheimr before it had been sabotaged by its human workers, had also been restored and was ready to begin functioning again.  

One of Kyrhyn’s aides, Tarkr, approached, “My Lord, a scout has reported that four of the remaining warbands have been spotted, each with a full coffle of thralls, within an hour of the city.  There is still no sight of the third.”

That had been the one sent the farthest south.  To the lands where the usurper’s changeling witch was from.  It had always been a gamble, one he had taken, certain that even if they lost those fearless Jotnar there would be enough disgustingly warm bodies to supply their needs.  And if they succeeded, what coup to be counted against that disgusting, little peasant.

He had never forgiven her for the pigshit he’d had to walk through the day he had been sent to fetch her for the king.  Had he known that she wasn’t just another mayfly mortal, he would have killed her in that stinking barn and accepted summary execution gladly, knowing that it would spare the lives of thousands of his people and his Emperor the shame of a rebellious child.  

“Good.  We will wait until full dark.  If there is no word from the last band by then we will start to raise the rivers.  Once the new thralls are penned with the others we can start dividing them up. The able-bodied between… what are their primes ages again?  Some ridiculously tiny numbers?”

“Eighteen and forty for most, my lord.”

“Yes, the able-bodied, healthy ones of those years are to be sent to the munitions factory.  The rest, to the food processing center. And have them and the ones waiting there strip. We can use the extra clothing for the factory workers since it will be hard enough to keep them warm enough that they won’t fall ill and put us behind.”

Tarkr saluted him, “Yes, my lord.  The Emperor will be certain to make you a general when word of your ruthlessness reaches him.  He may even ask you to join his personal warband.”

Kyhryn waved the flattery away, “I am unworthy of such an honor.  I simply want to see the wretch Loki and his vermin bride pay for their crimes.”

 

The prisoners, or slaves depending on if you were human or Jotunn, had been herded into what had been the administrative center of the city.  Many of the buildings, all sized for the Frost Giants, had been bombed out or burned down in the first days of the war, but the rubble had been bulldozed away and the huge space had been turned into a cattlepen for the captives.

When the latest coffle had arrived, hungry, cold, and badly footsore at the driving pace of the much longer legged giants, they found a sort of half-camp, half-squat.  Remains of buildings were used to create rough walls and lean-tos. Any fabric larger than a hankie was utilized as cover. Because they weren’t allowed to start fires for either cooking or warmth, families, friends, and strangers huddled together in these small warrens.  The Jotunn supplied only water and odds and ends of food. 

The stench hit the newcomers first.  They all smelled ripe, but the cold had kept their individual odors close to their bodies.  The relative warmth had caused the foulness of the filthy humans to turn into a nearly visible fug of stink above them.  Somewhere, invisible from the great iron gate they were herded through, must have been a great, open midden where everyone was doing their business, so clear was the stench of rotting shit and old urine.

And yet, as ghastly as that was, enough to make one of the newcomer women vomit the little bit of food she had in her stomach up, the smell was not the worst thing about the enclosure.

It was quiet. 

Frighteningly so.  

The only sounds were the odd cough or sniffle, or a small voice from a child too young to understand why they couldn’t speak, only to be shushed. That and the out of place babble of the few pre-verbal babies that emerged here and there were a wistful bit of music that made this cold, dirty place filled with gaunt specters and owl-eyed children seem even bleaker, almost haunted.  As if everything that might be said had been beaten and worn out of them.

After wiping her mouth as best she could on sleeve of the puffy coat she had taken off of the body of one of the dead men they had left behind on their trek north, it’s slick material already oily with dirt and stiff with cold, the woman who had thrown up shuffled with the rest of those she was chained to into the space.  They stood in place while one of the smaller Jotunns went down the line, pointing a device at each lock to free them. 

For a few moments after the high metal gate clanged behind them they waited for someone, some representative from those already there to speak.  Finally, a tall, pallid woman, her hair dark with grease, crawled out from one of the larger bits of shelter and spoke to them.

“They bring food and some water when new ones arrive.  Don’t wash. There isn’t enough to drink, and it’s warmer anyway,” she said, her accent polished but her voice was hoarse and broken.  “We have room in here, for a few small ones,” she gestured to her space. “There’s room here and there…”

Her voice faded out, and she knelt stiffly, crawling backwards until she was undercover and out of sight.

The woman who had thrown up looked around for a minute and then decided she was small enough to go in.  Her knees complained and ached, and her back hurt, but it felt better when she got down on all fours. The space was dark, but there was enough light to keep her and the children that followed her from bumping into any of the eerily silent, staring people in the space.  She went as far back as she could, finding herself next to the spokeswoman, who was huddled with her arms wrapped about her legs, her chin resting on her bony knees.

“What have they-,” she started to ask.

But the other woman just shook her head, never looking up.

They all sat in silence, hoping to be fed.

 

Kyrhyn dressed in his full Jotunn regalia, including the scrolled and gilded horn caps he had been given by the Emperor’s own hand for bravery against the Asgardians during the battle for Vanaheim.  He walked from his headquarters in one of the few buildings to survive the attack led by the one everyone called черная вдова, choosing for himself and the others who would work on the freezing of the rivers to walk to the brink.  

It would allow their forces to see them, to understand that their leader was not a mere figurehead as was true with so many who had served on Midgard under Loki, who had taken great pleasure in stripping power and will from anyone his father had installed there over the centuries.  Kyrhyn had fought hard to keep from falling another victim to the so-called king and the corruption of Jotunheimr’s values that was so common in his court. 

And today he would show that to the universe.

As he walked, his warband at his side, they passed the disgusting encampment of the Midgardian thralls.  It was massive, and the number of them was gratifying. By the end of winter only those of them most essential would remain, but in their place would be a full armory and a full store of food for the forces waiting to win what was theirs back.   

The division of them into workers and meat had already begun.  Though starved, cold, and cowed, it came as little surprise that they were restless and difficult finally.  Not just the newly arrived ones, which was to be expected, but some of the others as well who had already seemed beaten.  

Especially those being separated from their young.

Kyrhyn had expected as much.  Though he loathed the humans, unlike those Jotnar who had not lived among them, he did not underestimate them.  They were tiny, weak, and short of life and power, but they were tenacious and deeply stubborn. 

Fine, gray snow little better than rain fell on them, the light of the sky fading to a bruised pink, and some of the younger Jotunns were growing irritable with the fuss.  They were mostly from off planet and had arrived on Midgard expecting to walk through Loki’s forces and the humans like a steed fording a puddle, crushing and smiting their way to victory in no time.  

Now, months on, they were frightened but hiding it with anger.  They grew rough with the thralls, shoving some, roughly pulling squalling children from screaming parents.  Kyrhyn spoke to Tarkr, “Stop that. I won’t have their numbers diminished before we begin just because some stupid boy can’t keep his temper with the livestock.”

Nodding, Tarkr went to deal with it and Kyrhyn was able to arrive at the Forks of the great rivers.  Part of him wanted to make a speech, turn to his warband, to the leaders of the other bands that had come with him to lend their power to his and raise and freeze the river.  To call winter early to this benighted place. 

He shook it off, laughing at himself inside.  It was not the Jotunn way to waste words. He had spent too much time here, with the humans, with Loki.  Rather than indulge himself, Kyrhyn lifted his arms, wrists crossed, facing where the waters met and crossed.  If the Emperor were here he would be able to use the Casket and his own powers to bend the will of the elements to him with no effort, but they had no such advantage.  It was will, and the Jotunn’s special understanding of the cold and the ice, that started to slowly force the water upwards.

He felt the others - Dainir, Vorkl, Lan, and the other highborn loyalist - join their will with his.  The cold had cause them all to grow, until they towered over the earth, nearly giants in truth as well as name.  The air grew colder as they forced the warmth to retreat, the growing darkness hiding the too bright sun of Midgard.  The muscles in his thighs tensed and he could feel them tearing as he pulled cold from the earth and pushed it towards the water that still fought to remain within its banks.  

The surge of the rivers that sat beneath the surface of the earth, as they rose with the cold, caused the land to wave beneath them.  The heat that was forced out made a roiling fog that surged across the ground, covering them to their chests, and the noise of angry water and furious earth and the horrible, sharp cracks as the moisture in the trees near the banks cause them to splinter and break apart, meant they could hear nothing else.

Which is how Kyrhyn missed someone walking under the cover of the smoke-thick mist until she was right behind him, reaching up on her toes to tap him on the arm.

“Excuse me.”  Her voice was clear, even through the din of destruction.

Kyrhyn stilled, looking around wildly.

It could not be!  It was not… possible.

 

There was a sharp clearing of Nora’s throat, “I said, ‘excuse me’.  I… this fog is really bothering me, hang on a second.”

One, then another and another and another part of a fallen tree rose from the mist covered earth and began to turn, spinning faster and faster, swirling the fog up and up, as the Jotunns slowly stopped their efforts in confusion as the cover disappeared.

The water retreated with a mighty splash, creating a wave that pushed the rest of the mist away, leaving them soaked and confused.  

The trees dropped with a deafening clatter.

“I could have lived with you hiding here through the winter, regrouping, whatever.  I might have even overlooked you freezing my rivers,” the queen said, picking her way through the mess.  The filthy coat that she’d worn for the last few days was now too waterlogged and heavy to keep on. She stripped it off.  Which was a relief. Putting one hand on her enormous stomach, she pointed at Kyrhyn, “But slaves? And eating people? No.  I mean, I admit it’s kind of hypocritical because Baba Yaga loves a good Jotunn chop, but,” she shrugged, feeling herself wince a little at the memory, “she’s really old and set in her ways.”

One of the members of Kyrhyn’s warband moved towards her.  

A piece of one of the fallen trees with still a touch of life within it, answered her call, spearing through his chest and then the ground.  The great, blue body, gushed blood and rocked back and forth on the impaling wood with a creaking noise.

“We thought you were dead, Kyrhyn.  In the attack on the castle, and then Loki figured out that you hadn’t been found amongst the dead.  And that it was your security code that was used to make the last contact with the Imperial Palace.” She shook her head.  

Kyrhyn had hated her from the moment he’d had to fetch her from the farm, and it had only grown worse as she had fought him in the council meetings and the king had listened to her more and more.

He probably thought he was showing loyalty to the Emperor, when all he really was, was jealous.

She might have sympathised.  She loved Loki too, after all.  

But too many people had died.  Too many more could have, if Clulann’s people hadn’t gotten word of what was happening in Wînipêkohk.  

Now he looked at her, his chin haughty, his ruby eyes burning with hate.  “Do you expect me to beg for mercy, witch? To show you regret? I regret nothing, and nothing you do to me will change that.”

Nora shook her head slowly, trying not to wince as the baby kicked the hell out of her, clearly wanting to jump out and get in on the fight.  “I’m not going to do anything to you, Kyrhyn. After all, you were one of the ones who brought me to Loki, who witnessed our wedding, who saw me made queen.  They, on the other hand…”

His noble, cragged and heavily marked face furrowed still further in confusion, “They?”

“They,” she said, gesturing behind her to the massed crowd of humans, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, now freed from their pen.  

The mob surged forwards towards the Jotunn leaders and their warbands, and Nora walked the other way through them as they parted around her like water.  As she did, she flicked her fingers lightly, causing the claylike mud of the riverbanks to embrace the feet and then the calves and then the thighs of the Frost Giants.  

The time for fair play had passed.

The tall woman whose shelter she had shared was waiting for her, a surprisingly sharp twinkle in her eye, a clever grin playing with her thin mouth, “Are you ready to return home, fjársjóður?” she asked as her body grew a few inches, her hips narrowing, her chest growing flatter, her chin lengthening, other, more subtle changes occurred as well until she had returned to the male, Asgardian form.

Nora put her hands on her hips.  Her poor, aching hips. “Really?”

Loki shrugged slightly, “When we found that you were doing this dangerous thing, he called me forth and sent me to be here.”  He stepped forward, his fingers flexing and releasing, clearly wanting to touch where the baby was again kicking her silly because of the sound of his voice.  Loki’s voice.

Sighing, Nora reached out and put the flat of his hand against where the little heels were going to town.  

He sighed, closing his eyes.

 

Loki returned to the temporary palace in Citadel of Aleppo.  The massive structure had stood since long before the Jotunns had come to Midgard, going back to a time when an ancient storm god had been worshipped here.  The heat and light of the land surrounding it meant it had been left alone for the centuries since his people had come.

The Resistance in various forms had used it as a base, secret even from him, and when they had left the ruins of his former fortress, Clulann had offered it to him as a gesture of peace between them going forward.  

Outside the pale stone and thin, graceful palms gave no evidence of the constant motion within.  Troops and spies and envoys from around the Realms. Medical personnel and magic users. Mechanics, pilots, engineers, and messengers.  All moving. All with important tasks.

Loki waved away all approaches as he moved towards the royal quarters.  Nora was back, all else could wait.

Their rooms were darker and cooler than the rest of the citadel.  Ceorl greeted him, taking the king’s sword and the caftan he wore.  “Her majesty is in the bedroom. She told me no one was to allowed to disturb you until morning, barring a true emergency.”

“I trust you to know what is a true emergency.  But only you,” he added. Ceorl gave a small bow and left to attend to a meal for them.

The bedroom was different from that in his former palace.  The room was still large, with few furnishings. Low divans and an equally low table for informal meals, a few hangings in light colors, one large chest for clothing.  Only the size of the bed was the same, though this one was low to the ground and draped with diaphanous curtains to keep out the bugs and some of the sun.

From within it, he could hear Nora speaking quietly to his… other self, who then laughed lightly and started to speak again.  

He pulled off his boots and arm guards.  Clad only in a pair of loose black trousers that hung from his hips, he parted the curtains, “Ah hah!  My own wife and myself! In my own bed! Eating grapes and reading! Oh the shame.”

Nora put a hand to her mouth, trying not to spit fruit everywhere. 

His Asgardian twin was dressed as little as he was and was lying propped against the head of the bed, holding a book that he had been reading aloud from.  Nora was in a light robe of green linen - one of his of course, the woman was forever stealing his clothing, looking ridiculously tiny in them - that was just barely pulled over her breasts and the mound of her terribly swollen belly.  She lay pillowed against him, his long legs bracketing her.

“You really should have told me you were sending him,” she said.  

Loki ignored her words, shaking his head till his hair came free from its long braid to fall over his shoulders and into a wild mass down his back, knowing she loved it that way.  Knowing she would want to pull it and bury her face in it, the feel of it between her fingers making her wild. 

Lowering himself to his knees he came towards them, his eyes intent on her legs swathed in his robe and the place between them.  “You waited for me…” he murmured. Though it would have twinged, he had half expected to find the two of them engaged in some sensual act.  

Nora’s hormones and the changes in her body from carrying their unusual child, left her predictably tired, irritable, and in need of as much sexual service as he could provide and still let the two of them have enough time to sleep and wage a war.  

He loved it, being a slave to his wife’s erotic needs. 

Taking one of her feet in his hands, he knelt and briefly massaged each, the extra weight of not just a pregnancy, but a partial Jotunn pregnancy, had left her feet especially sore.  No doubt more so after toddling across Northern Olamaca for days. When his thumb worked into her tender instep she writhed and moaned and he thought her feet could wait.

He met his twin’s eyes, which were blown wide with lust, “If you are going to stay seperate you need to do your share.”

A toothy grin and a knowing nod answered him, “Oh yes.”

Loki slid Nora’s legs apart and also tilted her head upwards towards him, and his tongue entered both her mouth and her cunt at the same moment.  Each was soft and soaked and needy and he wanted to drown himself in her. One set of his hands wrapped themselves tenderly around her sore and swollen breasts, gently teasing her hard nipples and then pinching them hard enough that her hips bucked and her inner muscles squeezed.  

He could taste both her moans and the sweet flood of wet as he toyed with her clit, circling and teasing, whilst he worked two fingers into her to massage her inside, finding each bump and nerve cluster that required his attentions.  

She grabbed his hair with one hand as they kissed, she grabbed a horn with the other, pushing his mouth down harder and making him wild.

When she came it was too soon, not enough for either of him, and they silently changed places, each caressing and kissing all the places they could reach as they slowly traveled, each from his own place to the other.  Now she could taste herself on his lips and tongue. One of her flailing hands wrapped itself about his phallus, and he also took himself in hand as he settled again between her legs, his torso twisted so he could slowly pump himself to completion.

He spurted over her fingers, over his own, and she came in a flood into his mouth, whilst screaming against his lips. 

Afterwards, he let his other self stay until he fell asleep.  They lay in a pile together, and Loki stroked Nora’s stomach, distended and beautiful.  When he placed a kiss on it, a little kick brushed his cheek.

“Your daughter is feisty today,” she yawned.

“Ah, I have a daughter?” he asked, nuzzling the spot the kick had come from.

“Today you do.  A Jotunn daughter this time.”

Their little _ Vikkuaglød _ to be seemed undecided about a number of things, including their gender and their species.  They had been every permutation of male, female, neutral, Terran, Jotunn, and Asgardian in the last few weeks.  Once or twice they had even been other things, but never for very long. 

The dragon had been a very frightening and, thankfully for Nora, a short lived phase.

Nora stroked his hair, her motions growing fainter and fainter until they stopped and her breathing grew steady.  

Knowing she slept, Loki let his eyes close as well, content as he had never been.

 

Jotunheimr - 

The news of the loss of Kyrhyn, his troops, his factories, and the rebuilt airfield reached the Emperor at dinner with the Empress and their second oldest son and current heir, Leofric.

Leofric had raged at the incompetence of their forces.  At the lost opportunity. He swore that if Laufey let him go to Midgard he would bring back his cursed older brother and his Midgardian whore back to face justice.

The Empress said nothing, but looked at him as if to say that this was his doing.  That had she been listened to their oldest would be long dead and the Empire would be secure.

The Emperor sent them away, and sat long over a bottle of mead from the beehives on Vanaheim.  He touched the great blade on his hip that had been made by the dwarves who had once served the Asgardians alone.  He toyed with but did not eat from the plate of food - rice, spices, dried fruits - that had been supplied by the rich fields of Midgard.

He had everything to lose.  

He signalled for one of his aides, he didn’t even register which one, “Hail Thanos or whichever of his lackeys is speaking for him.  Tell them… tell them that I know where one of that which he seeks is hidden. Tell him he knows my price.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is long, but then, it's been a long wait.


End file.
